This accident started with an aircraft in autoflight experiencing trouble. At first, merely turbulence, then temperature fluctuations, air mass inconsistencies, and other cascading problems that caught the complete attention of the crew probably only when it was too late. I have said from my first post here, that the accident had its beginnings in the last seconds of autoflight, and the first seconds of manual control.
Wrong.
This accident started when the crew on the flight deck decided NOT to re-route around the weather in front of them, unlike the other flights taking similar routes that night. Everything that followed is consequential to that simple choice - go through or around. Have we forgotten this?
I have sat back and read the last umpteen posts and it seems there are two camps, both polarized in position - Airbus fans and Airbus not-fans. I am struggling to find a not-fan that is a 'bus driver, i.e. those that actually know the systems and characteristics of the airplane family all seem pretty happy with it. As with all complex things there could be improvements, but I have seen none posited that would be earth-shattering and would have prevented this accident.
So far I have seen no plausible explanation for the zoom-climb (call it what you will...) that caused the stall. The stick-stirring at least in my book is a result of an "oh-
" moment that caught the PF by surprise and without the tools in his toolbox to cope. The fact that "doing nothing" (or next to nothing - a minor roll correction at worst) would have saved PPRuNE many thousands of posts and was the closest thing to the right action is a sad thought, but the only one that makes sense.
We can continue to explore this or that protection in this or that sub-mode, but in my book if you reach a condition that relies on that protection to avoid disaster, well some level of disaster has already occurred. In the same way the stall warning is supposed to alert the crew BEFORE a stall actually occurs, the protections are there to prevent the aircraft achieving an attitude that is computed to threaten the aircraft. I don't believe any of the protection limits are restrictive in any normal flight mode? If the protections have gone away due to the loss of a critical input (i.e. airspeed) the airplane does not fall out the sky - it simply becomes wholly dependent on the PF, whereas before it was dependent on the PF+protections. In other words the most important "protection" is the PF. The problem here is that particular protection also seems to have "gone out to lunch" - unfortunately the airplane doesn't function too well once that happens.