glenbrook
It was especially shocking for me reading the final report on AF447 to see that apart from the pitots, nothing actually failed on the aircraft, until everything did.
I enjoyed your summary and your points, but let's not forget the trigger event: something did in fact fail (or become impaired): the pitot system. As noted numerous times in this four year long discussion, Air France had changed to the Goodrich pitot tubes on some of their fleet, but that particular hull had not yet gotten the change. Granted,
a system malfunction need not become an emergency (nor an upset) as previously noted hundreds of times. That seems to be a key point of great interest to the flying public, to professional pilots, to regulating authorities, and hopefully the management of airline companies.