@roulishollandais:
I only pop in from time to time at the moment, as I'm very busy with work.
The flight control computers, far from a "black box", were probably one of the most strictly-specified designs of their day. Given that the flight laws, the consequences of those flight laws and what triggers them are part of every conversion and training course on the A320 and her sisters, I think it unlikely that Airbus refused access to a "description" of the flight laws. The underlying logic maybe - but to a non-computer scientist this information would be meaningless.
As I recall, as part of the investigation, AF provided the BEA with documents still in force that prohibited display flights below (if I recall correctly) 600ft. If they gave Asseline the go-ahead to do so then the people responsible were negligent in not being aware of that rule.
Another poor judgement call by AF was in providing Asseline and his crew with charts of the Mulhouse airfield that were *photocopies* of the only one they had on file. This becomes important when it comes to the decision-making behind trying to fudge the flypast rather than turn around and try again. The photocopier they used was black and white rather than greyscale, and the graphic indicating trees at the end of the grass runway was of a grey too light for the photocopier to pick up - so if the crew checked their photocopied charts as they approached then they would have determined that the end of the runway was clear of obstruction because the copies were missing that information. This is the reason why the crew stated that they weren't expecting the trees at the end of the runway to be so high.
In the event, as AZR states, by disabling (rather than disengaging) autothrust - and as a consequence alpha floor, Asseline painted his aircraft into a corner that left no margin for error and there is no excuse for that - even less so with passengers in the back.
As for aircraft behaviour, the BEA's lead investigator on the case put together a test which set up one of the longest runways in Toulouse to mimic the approach made by Asseline based on the DFDR data, and what they found was that it was alpha protection that prevented the aircraft from pitching further up than it did. As Asseline asserted, it prevented a pitch up beyond a certain point, but what it was doing was preventing a stall because the airspeed was not sufficient to climb. If the aircraft had followed his pitch-up order, it is likely that the aircraft would have stalled short of the trees, likely resulting in an unstable crash and many more deaths than actually occurred.
There were no secret software errors and no significant technical failures - simply a pilot who took a gamble, in part because of erroneous information supplied by his employer, and lost with tragic results. The irony is that if Asseline's legal team had focused on AF's negligence rather than trying to cause controversy over the aircraft, he'd likely have had a much better case when he went to trial. Why he did not take this option is a question only he can answer.
Unfortunately because of the way aircraft accidents are essentially handled by the judicial process in France, a lot of rumour and counter-rumour was generated by the legal teams of those involved, which have obscured the facts under a mountain of legalese. The press were simply repeating the press releases from each legal team as they came - there was no attempt to check the veracity of what they were saying.