Healthy debate is good as it can only improve ones mind.
But lets for a minute look at the events in a different light to provoke more discussion if only to stimulate more thought (without personal insult which is rife on Pprune). Now before all you hot heads out there get wound up this is NOT the only possible blame scenario but just another angle.
One could look at all this as the blame lies 100% with the pilots, more specifically the Commander.
We all know that man has invented the A330 as he has with all other flying machines so that being the case it's guaranteed that these machines will fail sometimes.
Ok we know the probes didn't handle the outside wx conditions on the night, fine we accept that (as it's now fact) as humans designed/made the bloody things in the first place & we pilots have been using them (or any invented stuff) knowing full well that like any other zillion parts on an Aeroplane that they/it could fail at any time (that's why we have redundancy although in this case 50 probes wouldn't have helped!)remembering we don't fly in nice sunny clear days all the time. So we train for such failures (unreliable airspeed) & we have text books via zillions of pages on the Net, on-board text, general knowledge of flight ( a stall is a stall whether it be in a Wright Flyer or an Airbus) & we have the basic instinct as humans to survive.
Engine failures, there's plenty of them that have happened over the years from day one & we have trained to deal with them & modern day planes will fly all day on 1 engine (twin) so the question is why do we have trouble swallowing the fact that the pilots on AF447 where not totally responsible for the crash?
If you have an engine failure in a twin for Eg & you crash, is it not the pilots fault that the plane crashed all things being equal (I'm talking about a basic eng failure where it's survivable)? Yes obviously as we knew damned well that engines can & do fail so we fly accordingly, again what's the diff with AF447? It had an engine failure so to speak by way of blocked sensors (Pitot's) & the aircraft was simply miss-handled & crashed (much like a miss-handled eng failure) where we know had the pilots done some very basic airman-ship stuff they may very well be all still alive today.
For crying out loud they had around 40000' to do it in (get it under control) 4 mins by all accounts, that's quite a long time to be totally out of it when the answer initially was so very simple.(yes I know hindsight is a wonderful thing)
Why do we do all the checks we do in any aeroplane? 'cause to make sure it's safe to fly (safe as possible) so why not continue those checks albeit via recall actions at any stage of the flight should there be a problem?
We where all taught to fly (pilots obviously) & that skill should cover ALL scenarios that are fixable or preventable from the time we start the donks 'till it's chocked. The complexity of the machines we fly increase as we go thru our flying careers & so does the knowledge we need to have to handle such events.
Unreliable Airspeed is nothing new, most have probably experienced it during their career I know I have it's no diff in some ways than as I have mentioned an engine failure 'cause it's mechanical & can fail so we deal with it as per our training.
To me the highest proportion of blame lies with the Commander but it goes further than that.
If you want to break down this accident blame game ('cause humans are good at this) then you could start with the Capt (as he's the ultimate responsibility on the day)then the F/O's ( if the Capt wasn't avail then the next highest F/O is in CMD) then the designers of both the Airbus itself (Boeings have plenty of crashes under their belts as well just to be balanced) & the Pitot probes as well as the Co's check & trainers inc the Owners/managers all the way down to the Wright Bro's for getting us all in this mess in the first place!:-)
It crashed, man made it (the machine) & made it crash & they will continue to do so 'till the end of time.
So who do we blame here? You chose as like the Airbus itself there's more than one way to skin this cat!:-)
Remember we are all pilots, engineers & aviation enthusiasts so we can all learn something everyday
Wmk2