Originally Posted by
gums
The mentality ( attn Doze) that the system acted like it was designed has some problems if the aircrews don't fully understand the "system".
The "system" makes the A330 behave like any other aircraft. If you keep pulling up and let the speed decay, you will stall. F/O Bonin was a sailplane pilot of considerable skill - at some fundamental level, he understood this. If some folk want to make an argument that he was pulling up in the hope that Alpha Protection would keep him safe, they're welcome to it. But that argument chafes against the fact that as a sailplane pilot, he had to understand that if the aircraft was stalling and the increased thrust didn't help, then he had to get that lift from somewhere.
But he never acknowledged that the aircraft was stalled, despite the warning blaring in his ear for more than a minute. The horror afflicting the piloting fraternity is that he had all these indications and yet continued to pull up - a response for which there is no logical explanation. This accident is as inexplicable as it is horrific - something inside him kept telling him to pull up in the face of all the data he was presented with. I suspect that psychologists will be tasked with trying to provide an explanation until long after I'm gone, but it's not a case of being confused by the systems, it's a case of a pilot - for reasons that we'll never understand - pulling up consistently in the face of a situation where the precise opposite action was required.