Dozy:
Fair enough, that's your opinion - but have you ever actually flown a FBW Airbus? Plenty that have state that the autotrim is completely unobtrusive when hand-flying and that the aircraft as a whole handles rather well.
No, I have not flown an airbus. My problem with autotrim
when hand flying any aircraft is that I may not want it to follow my control inputs. Unfortunately, this crew seems not to have known anything about trim. Maybe having the trim announce to the crew that it is moving would have been a wake-up call and someone would have said, "oops we don't want that," but I doubt it. It certainly would have got my attention. Sadly, the men seated in the cockpit were completely out of their element.
Quote:
You have stated that there are good and sufficient reasons for the design of the software in the hand-flying mode, but
AFAIK you have not offered any reasons why that design is preferable to my reasons for disconnecting autotrim when hand-flying.
In fact I did, but it's several threads back - one of the reasons was the ability to have hands on throttle and stick in a pilot incapacitation scenario.
Pilot incapacitation is not much of an issue in a multi-seat cockpit. Trimming is not difficult and, for a pilot worthy of being called a pilot, it is a natural activity which is so routine that it is done almost unconsciously. I have flown aircraft with the pitch trim on the yoke, on the stick, and on the console. I never found it a burden to activate any of them. I prefer it on the stick or yoke since that does free up the other hand, but the difference is really not material. What I don't want is having the system changing the trim when I want to remain trimmed for a particular speed or AoA. In the case of AF447, the system gave up and turned it over to the people seated in the cockpit, except they didn't turn over everything and I believe that situation makes it more difficult to
hand-fly. Autotrim has its place, but not in my cockpit
when I am trying to hand-fly.