Originally Posted by
AlphaZuluRomeo
In conclusion, I share your regret but do not feel entitled to accuse the BEA.
Agreed. The BEA stated - correctly - that the behaviour was consistent with High AoA Protection mode. Given that the behaviour had little - if anything - to do with the factors leading to the accident, it is unsurprising that the report does not go into more detail.
Aside from the fact that CONF's assertion that, in the Hudson incident, the protections "prevented a perfect touchdown" is a fiction to which he appears to be the only subscriber - the NTSB were freer to look into aircraft behaviour in their report as there were far fewer preceding factors (barring the birdstrike itself) to write up. In true half-informed fashion, some of the press wrote up the behaviour as "assisting" the landing on water, but since when have any of you ever taken the press seriously? An attitude which is entirely understandable given the frequent mistakes and mischaracterisations they make.
RRR - we don't know exactly what the B777 systems would have done in a similar scenario, but based on the understanding I have, the servos driving the yokes would have significantly increased resistance to the pilot's inputs the closer the aircraft came to maximum permissible alpha. This in turn would have increased the physical effort required to pull up. The behaviour may be more akin to a conventional setup in some respects, but the systems would still have in effect been "fighting" the pilot's inputs.
"Crawley High St." refers to an incident related in a dead-tree book I owned, the first edition of 'The Tombstone Imperative' by Andrew Weir. It apparently happened to a G- registered A320 in July 1988 and was tangentially related to the Bangalore and Strasbourg accidents (i.e. autoflight-related). Given the lack of online references I can find I can only think it must have come from a CHIRP or similar reporting regime.