Clandestino,
Reading your most recent strictures, must admit I'm starting to wonder exactly what we are arguing about here. You seem determined to misinterpret and misrepresent my posts, and no doubt most readers will have lost any interest in our exchanges by now. The trouble is, your responses to my considered opinions are so terse, shrill, and contemptuous that - always up for a challenge - you give me little choice other than to reply.
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That talk about "oh-so-sensitive-controls-that-eat-inexperienced-pilots-for-breakfast-when-they-try-to-handfly-at-altitude" is total bollocks...
...there is TAM crew that has proven you can throw altn lawed A330 around and not even hurt anyone. Their actions were massively wrong but absolutely not fatal!
Actually, I commented that hand-flying even the B707 for hours at cruise altitude (in akin to "Direct Law", with no protections except Mach trim and yaw damper):
"wasn't difficult, but it required unbroken concentration and - yes - a gentle touch. Our passengers didn't want (or need) to end up wearing the food that the flight attendants were serving them."
Not sure if the TAM incident was during a meal service, but in any case you cannot remain standing on the floor of an a/c during negative G, and it's even difficult to remain in your seat if unbelted. Anyway, I'm glad you accept that their flying was less than ideal...
You would no doubt agree that the TAM crew grossly over-controlled the a/c, which I suspect was mainly due to a lack of familiarity with hand flying at cruise altitude. Fortunately, they didn't quite achieve +2.5g or -1G, so that element of the protections was not employed.
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If you haven't read and understood HTBJ...
Surprise! I read Davies's first edition around 1970. By the following year, I was a full-time co-pilot (we didn't have heavy crews in those days) on VC10s, cruising at M0.82 - 0.86 at up to FL430. A tad faster and higher than the A330. What were you doing in those days?
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I am suggesting these loaded questions just show popular prejudice of the way modern passenger aeroplanes are flown and have merely slight resemblance to reality.
Not sure about popular prejudice these days, but we certainly heard it when we launched A320 ops in 1988. If you are saying that my own suggestions for improving the handling skills of the present generation of big-jet crews have "merely slight resemblance to reality", you should bear in mind that - after five widely-differing jets during 17 years - my last 14-years' flying were spent on the A320. As you know well, but some of our readers may not, the A320 cockpit and FBW system is almost identical to the A330's, and the difference in speeds and altitudes negligible.
There have been few changes to the Airbus FBW cockpit in its 25 years of airline operation, but most airline pilots on jets today lack much of the jet handling experience that was second nature to my generation. They are highly orientated towards the handling of the automatics, and failures of all kinds are uncommon. That may even be a mixed blessing. There were already signs of this impending problem 20 years ago, and it is not restricted to FBW Airbuses. What I am advocating for pilots is the opportunity for self-development. If you are inclined to restrict yourselves to a role of simply programming and monitoring the automatics of flight, that is a mind-numbing task on long-haul that might as well be conducted from the ground. What do you do on a routine sector of 12 hours or more?
Anyone who has become detached for long periods from the pilot's primary task of maintaining a reasonable flight path, and has limited hands-on experience to fall back on, is less likely to act appropriately when something unexpected happens; i.e., more vulnerable to the startle factor.