Lyman;
"My take is that as well as PF did in his containment of his initial
overcontrol in ROLL, he was unable to sense a neutral, in PITCH attitude. I
would have expected that due to DIRECT LAW in ROLL, it should have been the reverse."
Some edu-guesses - they could be way off base, but an attempt...
The airplane is more sensitive in Alt Law in roll but once one gets used to it, it is controllable using tiny inputs. Being unable to sense a neutral point would be difficult because it is strong enough in the SS to feel it, but if distracted or under pressure, perhaps not as easily. The way to find the null in either yoke or SS is to let go of the controls for a moment - in most cases nothing immediate would occur and one starts from the null point. The airplane is less sensitive in pitch, but in pitch one is changing the trajectory of the entire mass, and in thin air, whereas in roll, one is (in the immediate sense), not asking anything more of the airframe than a change in bank - other than the engines, fuel and wing-structure and some resistance from the vertical and horizontal stabilizers, one isn't immediately changing flight-path which requires much more work. Just edu-guessing here...remember, I'm not an engineer!
"Simply put, PF was chronically either a) seeking to slow, or b ) seeking to
avoid a descent. What other than those two would explain a chronic UP input? You
point to his remedy of ROLL in "Phase 1". Later, with excursions in ROLL of over
40 degrees either side, he kept the bird from turning over. Again, a "mastery"
of lateral. But an acute misunderstanding of PITCH."
Possibly - this has been discussed at length in thread 2 or 3. The baro alt decreases about 300ft initially then recovers quickly - it did this in the Air Caraibes event as well. Seems a characteristic of this event. Even if this was an over-reaction by an inexperienced-at-manual-flight-in-cruise pilot, (and there, most of us are the same!), it is easily controlled by gently pitching back down and settling the mass of the airplane. But no. The pitch continued to increase. There is lots of blue on the PFD, and one should be getting very (very!) twitchy where one's behind meets the seat if you get my drift - high pitch angles at cruise are an instant "full-alert" & "get it down", now, kinds of occurences.
On pitch, I suspect right after the apogee and by the time the bank angles were reaching 40deg, (only at one point in the descent), a differently-developing psychological state began overtaking the crew, esp the PF. It is well known that high stress exhausts intellectual resourcefullness and perceptions - this was mentioned in the Alaska Air 261 MD80 jackscrew accident off LAX. I think this would be addressed in the HF section of the Report. A rational assessment of pitch was perhaps less possible as a visceral, self-preservation response developed from a state of increasing loss of SA - the solidly-held up elevator occurs twice in the descent and for a protracted period of time. The same phenomenon was recorded in the
Airborne Express DC8-63 stall accident in 1996.
"Do you expect any surprises in BEA "Final"? I think most everything was
anticipated at great length here. Do you think they will address UAS in full,
for instance, discussing loss of Radome? How in depth will they go in analyzing
the vagaries of the newest nemesis " Microcrystalline Water Ice"? "
I think the surprises will probably be in the emphasis the BEA places on various aspects of the accident and not in what may or may not have been missed. There will be absences in the report that will be puzzling to some I suspect but that comes from one's particular POV and not necessarily from the importance of one or another aspect of the accident. The three IR's are thorough, particularly the third and address HF/Ops matters such as SOPs, CRM and so on and I think that will be the most examined. It is reasonable to consider that the stall warning, AoA indicator (raised in the Airborne Express accident), and THS items will be discussed but it is hard to say how, primarily because the airplane performed as designed and certified. It will be interesting to see if the sidestick issue is discussed. I think it will be minor if at all, primarily because it remains a demonstrably successful design and there are some counter-examples where the yoke design hasn't prevented the stall or crash, and because the expectation that design engineers cannot be expected to design against all possible circumstances. Something like that anyway...it's all a guess.
I hope the UAS issue will be addressed from a number of viewpoints. As you know I think the drill and checklist are poorly-crafted, poorly-trained and to put it simply, confusing. There are a few documents which have surfaced over the past year or so that put meat on this memorized drill and read-do QRH checklist so perhaps with such supporting training it's okay as written. The FCTM emphasizes items that are not at all clear in the drill. I think the PF was executing what he knew from a previous sim which was the memorized drill just after takeoff which is entirely the wrong thing to do at cruise altitude but this isn't clear as evidenced in the discussion in thread 5 or 6. I've had a go at re-designing it and it seems to work but there are always considerations that at first aren't obvious and maybe the drill as-written is still the best. I think the pitch-up was intentional and it rapidly confused the PF and the PNF did not take action, did not challenge what was happening and did not stop it, which, to me and many others, would have been obvious once seeing a pitch attitude of 10 - 12 degrees at FL350 so I think there is a cultural thing (broadly HF) here that will show up in the report. This has already been mentioned with regard to two F/O's, cockpit gradient, Captain's briefing etc.
There was no loss of radome until impact so it won't be discussed.
I think the discussion of ice formation and loss of pitot function will be extensive, as will the pace and decision-making process regarding actions and replacement prior to the accident. I think it may be a summary of thinking and design changes already done. But also it deserves the same kind of treatment say, that the ice-formation in the Trent 900 received in the BA777 Report.
I think also there will be questions/comments for all parties regarding awareness, training and checking given that the industry had had thirty-odd UAS events in cruise yet it didn't appear to be making them a part of recurrent training. I never once saw any such abnormal in the sim yet they were out there, post-1996. Other already-required scenarios may have crowded out the time needed for this but it
was a demonstrable threat which, to me, was not handled in the way we ourselves are trained when we are doing threat-and-error management in the cockpit. I can't ever recall it even being discussed.
"Will they rehash the badness of reselecting AutoPilot whilst in NCD?"
I can't recall - did the crew do that and was it potentially a factor? Regardless, I suspect it won't be discussed except in passing. The Bulletin was issued and is part of SOPs.
"A month to go, then with renewed vigor....."
It's an extremely challenging report to write - I think it will be longer than June but again, a guess. I suspect the translation will be even longer still.