@jcj - The BEA is a different institution than it was in 1979. The world learned the hard way what happens when accident investigation and repair procedures are stymied for political reasons. They were so afraid of being seen as biased following AF296 that they invited the NTSB along as impartial observers following the Air Inter crash, and to my knowledge the NTSB had nothing bad to say about thir methods. I'd like to know the source of the "large" vs. "small" argument in 2000 regarding Concorde, and I'd also like to know more details about what that means. To me, a "large" hole would imply a significant enough size to reduce lift, which never happened due to a tyre burst.
@CONF
A Service Bulletin also says "fix this" - the difference between that and an AD is that the aircraft should not be considered airworthy without the repair being done promptly (and supervised by the regulatory authority) in the case of the latter, which was not the case based on the evidence prior to AF447.
(PS. My question here :
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/3...ml#post6661648 remains unanswered - did you see it, and would you like to give it a go?)
Airbus covered as many bases as possible by releasing the Service Bulletin and advice to pilots for procedures to follow in the case of a UAS incident. These procedures were not followed in the case of AF447, whether due to human factors, poor training or a combination of the two. Whatever the outcome of the debate over the stall warning logic at low speed, the fact is that the aircraft would not have stalled in the first place had proper airmanship been applied, and no matter how many some may wish for evidence supporting the automatics being behind the initial zoom climb, that evidence does not exist. Instead there's plenty of evidence supporting manual input causing the zoom climb, followed by a failure to diagnose stall and an attempt to "power out" of the upset, and unless you're prepared to provide evidence that the BEA have somehow falsified the flight recorder traces, then that is the most likely conclusion.
The BEA are not content to "blame the pilots" and leave it at that, however and the presence of an in-depth human factors investigation proves that - so to say that they are protecting the regulator, manufacturer or airline is nothing short of a big, fat lie. As I said earlier, the A330 is a success and the project has broken even - what is there to "protect"?