I've come to the conclusion that many of the comments here, taken together, are a damning indictment of the cockpit crew of this ill-fated flight.
rgbrock1, I fully realize that you went on to clarify and amend the above comment, but I see a number of "damning conclusions," at least the ones that
I myself make, from the comfort of my armchair.
1. Air France, for not changing the substandard pitot tubes fast enough
2. The regulatory agencies responsible for rule-making in reference to the above.
3. Air France training
4. The entire industry, again for the failure to provide proper upset training
5. The pilots themselves, both their, uh, flying skills, and their poor decision to fly into that storm
6. Deficiencies in the Airbus design in terms of lack of tactile feedback in the controls (
all of the defifiencies posited by contributors to this thread).
7. Deficiencies in the Airbus instrumentation and control design in terms of stall warning behavior, angle-of-attack display, auto-trim, and the list is long.....
As someone who has NO industry axe to grind, I strongly believe that ALL of the above were dangerous holes in the Swiss cheese, and if any one of the above factors had been not present, the crash might not have happened. I love posting opinions that cannot be proved wrong!
