He told the PF to stop climbing, told him not to deploy speedbrakes and during the few seconds he had control tried to get the nose down. He seems to have figured out what was happening - why he didn't communicate this is one for the BEA HF bods.
Are those few bits and pieces really enough indicators, that PNF was aware of the situation and would have been able to act in a correct way from the onset (AP ATHR disconect) of the event?
I donīt think so. PNF was out of the loop from beginning and equally surprised like PF by what exactly was happening and was way behind the events. He grasped some bits and pieces further on into the event, but again without grasping the whole picture.
Thatīs also the reason why he did not take over control, why he did not give clear and precise commands, why he could not get the attention of the PF, why he was not able to brief the captain in a clear and professional mannor. Poor captain got nothing out of this crew, when he returned to the flight deck.
"AP and ATHR disengaged due to UAS, Initial control problems in ALT 2 got us into a steep climb, SW triggered, we leveled off with TOGA and are now in some kind of uncontrolled descent despite TOGA and back SS. What do you recommend? "
Wouldnīt that had been some kind of appropriate information from someone who knew whatīs happening?
PNF recognised early that something went wrong, but he couldnīt get to the point what exactly was going wrong, why it was going wrong and what to do about it to save the situation.
You think otherwise?
Than sit down in that left hand seat, get yourself into the loop of this flight and then write down how you would have handeled the situation from the beginning and compare it to what we know until now (the HF group may shed aditional information in the final report) what PNF really accomplished.........close to nothing.
And then the question stays, why two pilots missed that bad.