HN39, You mean the question, "Was he perhaps trying to maintain 15° pitch attitude?"
That is a perfectly reasonable question. No doubt BEA Human Factors Group is wrestling with this question still.
My feeling is that he was unintentionally catching a piece of aft stick during his lateral stick thrashing, and the characteristic of the pitch axis law is to basically add up (i.e. integrate) all those pitch input pulses. That is what caused the nose to rise, IMHO.
The man's scan was obviously broken at that point. He was not monitoring pitch! He was as far behind the aircraft as you can get (in the aviation sense of the word).
My reasons for concluding in this direction have to do with the notorious Occam's razor. Having found one plentifully sufficient for losing control of the pitch attitude, why introduce another? His pitch problems started when the wings started wobbling. He didn't actually have sufficient free attention available to implement a pitch attitude.
The delayed implementation of the handover to the crew might be considerably longer than 20 seconds. As long as the system knows the gross weight, configuration,operating altitude, and initial conditions, there is actually no reason it could not fly for hours like that, with only a small loss in fuel efficiency.
As I have said previously, how did we cruise our jets in the old days before autothrottles?
Last edited by Machinbird; 11th Mar 2012 at 20:09.
Reason: Address second part of HN39's statements.