HazelNuts39
But would a brisker response of the airplane have altered what he was trying to achieve? Have you considered why he briefly released his pull on the stick?
To answer that question we would have to come to a conclusion, what PF tried to achieve firsthand. Neither BEA nor our efforts here come to a final result.
Several options had been discussed here, and can be grouped into the intentional climb and the unintentional climb. By that i refer mainly to the amount and intensity of the climb, not the climb as the opposite of the descent or the equivalent of an maintaining level. That the PF intended at least to correct the indicated altitude loss and the deviating pitch and VS should be agreed to. Everything else later on is not clear anymore.
If the climb in that intensity was intentional, then nothing would have influenced or changed the end result. But do we have ultimate proof of that theorie? I dont think so. When PNF told the PF to go down, he acknowledged to do so, he did not argue against the PNF, although he didnīt comply in deeds. Was he not willing to do so or was he not capable to do so (intention to do so was present, but the means to accomplish it were unsuitable)?
We know almost, that the manual flying expierience of the PF on the A330 was mainly accomplished during takeoff and landing. In T/O itīs
afaik comparable to a direct law behaviour, and during landing phase when SS inputs are necessary close to ground itīs flare law. During flare law the PF is maintaining the trajectory by compensating the system induced ND force by a NU SS input, and to reduce the trajectory he just has to relax some of this NU SS input. The normal feeling on the SS from day to day flying therefore is holding some backpressure to maintain the flightpath during landing or to rotate and climb during T/O. The necessity of ND SS input and the required amount of ND SS input in normal daily operation therefore differed grossly to that one needed to correct this unintentional climb.
Additionally in day to day flying the roll channel doesnīt need much attention, except when a change of direction is desired, but otherwise the aircraft is stable in bank. PF was occupied by getting the wings back to level and maintaining them there, with roll law in direct a task he was not used to do. He might have associated the prooblems in achieving the correct pitch with the deviations in changing bank angles.
My position was from the beginning and still is, that the initial climb in the recorded intensity and duration was unitentional due to lack of manual handling at altitude and in degraded law. That PF was more occupied by roll control than pitch control, the last one may be doing by feel like he was used to during landing phase in flare mode. His corrective action to the announced and acknowledged deviation from altitude and pitch targets was ineffective from the beginning, leading only to a little decrease of VS without correcting the main problem, the beginning trajectory through the propulsion ceiling and the lift ceiling. Selecting TOGA in honour of the stall warning 2 made those inadequate amounts of SS relaxing useless, increased the pitch even more and led to the final stall.
From that point on the crew was helpless, as they did not know what brought them into this situation, what that situation actually was and therefore denied them the insight, what actions would bring them out of this situation. Therefore the SS inputs in that phase after the stall are no pointer to the initial intent.
In this assumed unintentional sequence the mentioned points by CONFiture are more than valid.