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I know the AL defeats Reselect, but what does it do with an AP left ON?
It turns it OFF and latches it OFF until ground crews perform maintenance.
As an addition: annex 3, page 2: The AP2 disengaged at 2:10:06, 3 seconds before ATHR disengaged, and never went on again. (AP1 not shown.) By the way, the FD1 + FD2 were off for the better part of the last 3 minutes, so no "flying after the FD all the time" as suggested somewhere else.
As to the BEA relation to Airbus or Air France: Despite I had my doubts before (mainly due to the mishandling of the Mulhouse case), I don't think anymore that there is any relevant or "protective" link. Perhaps BEA knew about their public image since they almost always invited experts from other countries (at some points they had to according to ICAO annex 13) and documented crucial moments with pictures such as the openings of the flight data recorders. All facts I can crosscheck are correct, the conclusions I can draw from the raw data in the annexes are basically the same as they did, no major discrepancies found so far.
Perhaps we should face that supposed-to-be-professionals screwed up entirely for more than three minutes, not just for one wrong hand movement in the wrong second.
Why are certification requirements not adapted to recent findings? Why are aircraft marketed with bold statements like "the pilot can't do wrong, the plane sorts out his errors"? Did this add to the mental picture the PF had? As someone said, handing back from computer to pilot as a safety backup strategy does not work anymore for a generation that is flying computers immediately after ATPL. Do we have to rethink safety strategies?
They weren't suicidal, they fought for their own lifes as well and sadly lost. But how come that their abilities were so limited, despite thousands of hours?
As individuals: How come that flying manually is something not much appreciated in the industry? How could they build up certain skills when "managing computers" is the work description? How could they avoid wrong reactions (TOGA at high alt) when this is standard sim drill, since high altitude flying is almost entirely ignored? Why is basic flying in simple aircraft not fostered more in order to build basic skills?
As a team: The captain wasn't in his seat, and due to his CV I'm convinced he would have had the abilities to handfly without major problems. But how was he trained and tested to lead a crew? Great pilots are not automatically great leaders. Did he overestimate the skills of his PF? Was he reluctant to interfere more vigorously, being a nice guy? Hierarchy was a negative factor in KLM4805, JAL123, ... but without any hierarchy (clear roles) seems to be just as bad. Where was CRM??