OF makes a general speech or lecture
In response to very little, I am moved to post my overall take on all this. I am continually surprised at the polarization of views about this horrible crash. That is, the tendency by some to be in one of two camps, i.e., either the pilots were incompetent or the airplane was at fault. (I realize that not all of you feel that way.) Somebody once said that a measure of intelligence is one's ability to hold more than one opposing ideas in his/her head. Such is the case here.
I firmly believe that all of the below are true, except for one thing that has yet to be determined, item 3*:
1. The pilots were not competent to hand-fly in difficult conditions at cruise, probably caused the upset, and were not trained properly to recover, by Air France or anyone else.
2. The pilots were not capable for some reason (see point #3) of ascertaining their situation.
3.* (My own speculation) I am not necessarily buying-into the idea that PF had proper indications. The evidence on that is very unclear (of course there is no recording of his instrument readings). There is anecdotal evidence that either view could be true (from recorded conversations that may or may not be complete). I'm also puzzled by the complete acceptance of the contention that Bonin made all of these crazy inputs. I've seen NO discussion of the methods of recording his input data. What if the plane did it? Do we really know??? Are the stick sensors coupled directly to the stick?
4. It is "obvious" to me that, despite protestations of many excellent pilots right here in this forum, the Airbus control design, both software and hardware (SSs), is less "foolproof" than it could be. To say that "it's good enough if the pilot is good enough" is simply not good enough. 228 people and their loved ones would disagree with that attitude. While Rutan's comments struck me as being way off-base ("computer nerds"), I certainly agree with him about the "hidden" SSs being an insane idea.
I hope that the final BEA report will be utterly honest about ALL of the issues, but I'm not optimistic. I also hope I've successfully summed-up the issues.