Graybeard:
I was told EAL-401 AP tripped off because the long time chief pilot of TWA had insisted during the design that the AP kick off at a much lower CW force than LCC wanted.
He was also the guy who insisted on a 500' full scale radalt indicator. The TW 727 that hit a hill on approach to Washington in 1975 due to lack of situational awareness that would have been aided by the industry standard 2500' radalt indicator, was the accident that brought the mandate for GPWS.
All the overhead switches on TW planes back in that era were backwards from other airlines. Second tier operators, who later had those planes in mixed fleets, had their hands full.
That chief pilot had an overbearing personality, and the authority to get his way. Vendors gave him special coddling in his travels. Best not to go into that here.
His initials were Gordie Granger.
I was a pilot there. We tried in vain to get the company to use the full 2,500' capability of the RA before TWA 514 happened (12-01-1974). No luck, their response was it is for CAT II, not altitude awareness.
BTW, Gordie wasn't the chief pilot, he was the director of safety or some B.S. title like that. The chief pilot was Ed Frankum. He and Gordie were like two peas in a pod.
The backwards switch deal died with the L-1011 and B-767. So did the 500 foot RA readouts. Lockheed and Boeing were tired of playing with Gordie by that time.
One summer, when I was on the 727, we had a 727-200 exchange with National for few birds. We were tried by bulletin. We had to be careful with those standard Boeing switches.
Gordie could have been responsible for the light (15 pounds) of forward pressure on the control column to kick the autoflight from command to CWS. But, Lockheed took the hit on the EAL swamp crash because of the lack of an audible warning. (Where were the FAA cert folks on that one?)