Originally posted by awblain
The tweak to the flight control laws that damps the phugoid oscillation seems wholly irrelevant to the Habsheim situation. It's also seems irrelevant to Bilbao. A control input to ensure the smooth gain of height on a 20s timescale isn't going to put someone into a hole they're flying towards.
It's not really irrelevant to Habsheim because although the longer term effects of the 'tweak' could not affect the motion very much in the short time available the speed feedback that provides some of the phugoid damping became operative as soon as Alpha Protect mode became active. Seeing the steady loss of airspeed during the last few seconds this term led to a nosedown signal which offset the pilot's command for more AOA and restricted the aircraft to 15 deg AOA rather than the 17.5 deg of alphamax. As I understand it, it is this restriction that Confiture claims to be a factor in the aircraft striking the trees. The significance of holding AOA below alphamax is best established by a performance discussion rather than one on the system design. As gums has pointed out, when flying close to the aircraft lift limits the available gee for a pull up is very limited.