Lifted from aviation week dot com:
NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said July 10 that during the final 2.5 min. of flight, the flight data recorder shows transition to “multiple autopilot modes and multiple autothrottle modes.”
Uncertainty hangs over whether the mode changes were pilot induced, or commanded by the auto-flight system. In any case, does point to a crew busying themselves trying to make the autoflight system do as they want when, perhaps, they should have gone 'click-click', 'click-click' and simply hand flown the aircraft to a safe arrival. In this context a lack of currency induced by long-haul flights, restrictive SOPs and an institutional opposition to manual flight should play a major role in the investigation.
Perhaps this accident, along with the more unfortunate ones involving Continental and Air France, may finally motivate the regulators to impose more hands-on practice, both during initial and recurrent training, as well as an examination regime ensuring they boys and girls up front demonstrates their ability to pole the damn thing around the skies.