As expected, the BEA Report is comprised of carefully crafted smoke — placing blame on the pilots of course — and distraction from the real issues of airplane design and regulator oversight failure
1. The loss of airspeed information caused a change in the FCS mode,
2. The FCS Mode change resulted in loss of the envelope speed and angle of attack (AOA) limits — no stall protection — no overspeed protection — no bank angle/pitch angle protection —
3. The inexperienced FO… made a radical pitch control input (full aft stick), … not noticed by the ‘other’ FO, (the A330 has independent control sticks, and so the pilot doesn’t know what the other pilot is doing with his control stick);
4. This caused the horizontal stabilizer (THS) to automatically apply full nose‐up trim — …
5. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) indicates that, incredibly, the stall warning ceased (as designed) while the airplane was still in a deeply stalled condition, then reappeared when recovery action was attempted, adding even more confusion to the situation.
6: If I remember well some fuel had been transferred to the tail (which I suppose happens automatically during cruise, like on MD11, to reduce fuel consumption) making it even more hopeless, if they wanted and had tried, to exit the condition of deep stall they were in.
Who knows how many glitches are hiding behind the automation of AB?
On our skin we discovered a few:
- You loose the manual cotrol of throttles under 50 'R.A.
- The Flight Path Angle was easily confused with the vertical speed.
- The autothrottle is excluded by removing the Flight Director/s
- The ground spoilers do not extend unless there is a weight of 1000 kg on both the landing gear,
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.