Originally Posted by thermostat
Will we ever know what really happened??
YES. We do know what happened. The airworthy A330 airplane was flown into a CB with supercooled water in it. The SC water froze over the 3 pitot tubes simultaneously, causing a loss of critical systems. The surprised crew (who were also dealing with numerous fault warnings and turbulence) inadvertently mishandled the controls causing a high altitude stall from which they did not recover. Simple. I don't see why so many will not or cannot understand that.
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"inadvertently mishandled" ? ? ?
Edit: more commentary.
FAR 25.207 says, in part:"Once initiated, stall warning must continue until the angle of attack is reduced to approximately that at which stall warning began."
According to the BEA AF447 interim rpts, the stall warning did NOT "continue until the angle of attack is reduced to approximately that at which stall warning began." The stall warning ceased when the artificial intelligence stepped in and determined that it wasn't correct because the programmers had assumed that any A/S below 60KIAS was not possible in the air. The pilots were dealing with an inconsistent machine, it was sending mixed signals which added to the confusion.
Just this one fact ( which happens to be in line with the thread topic) makes this far more than just an accident where the flight crew "mishandled the controls".
Regarding the man/machine interface issue, the machine must be consistent and the interface must be accurate and consistent. In the AF447 case, the machine was inconsistent, the interface was inaccurate, and the men were unable to determine reality from illusion and perception. Had the stall Warning continued as required by the FAR (I understand that the A330 wasn't FAR certified, just accepted) the crew might have eventually recognized and accepted its validity.