@Opsmarco
I agree. As you must agree that sometimes a technical fault with a very low probability of happening happens, and since the probability for that issue to arise, crew wasn't ready and did not respond the way they should (I'm speaking theoretically, as I said, I won't speculate on what happened here), starting a chain reaction...
But remember also something : the Boeing 777 is an amazing aircraft, we all agree on that. But if you look at the numbers, statistically, a problem that has an extremely low probability of happening on the 777, the more aircraft fly, and the longer the model is in service, the higher the probability that same issue arises...
Technical faults do happen. The more times you fly, the more likely it is that something will eventually happen somewhere. I think you're alluding to a modified diluted version of the anthropic principle here - in that obviously something must have happened to the plane - in your view, possibly sequential multiple failures, hence the low likelihood is of less relevance. The trouble with this reasoning is that we don't actually know what happened to the aircraft. All we can say is that
we have an a priori probability of various events occurring. When you stack unlikely events, the overall sequence
becomes even more unlikely.
I agree to some extent with your chain reaction idea. In particular, if the plane is damaged and the environmental conditions change such that the crew are incapacitated then it significantly hampers their recovery efforts. However, largely these crew don't respond to crises in the same way than an unprepared individual might (i.e. not be ready etc.). A large part of their training incorporates being ready to fly broken planes insofar as I would actually say that these professional pilots are experts in flying broken planes more than unbroken ones. Obviously, the jet pilots out there can correct me on this point if I'm mistaken. But my impression is that it takes a whole lot more skill to fly a broken plane than a perfectly functioning one, and that's exactly why these experienced pro's are up in the sky not just anybody.