beardy wrote:
It does seem rather extreme to trawl through his data card for timings in order to match those from the FDM and then forensically examine the camera body simply to confirm a story.
I strongly suspect that the Captain had absolutely no idea that his camera had caused the problem and that the damage to the camera was initially suspected to have been caused by it having been thrown about during the manoeuvre and recovery. I'm also pretty sure that he would have been entirely happy to volunteer his camera for forensic analysis, as he was as mystified as everyone elase about the cause of the incident.
I do agree that the whole training package should be carefully examined - and I agree with
beardy that the significance of the continuous 'cavalry charge', plus the FMA indication should have provided an obvious clue. Out of curiosity, is the break-out force to disconnect the AP through side-stick override particularly high? Is this something shown to new Airbus pilots in the simulator during Type Rating training in the civil world?
One wonders what the effect of a jammed control column in an aircraft
without Airbus' excellent flight envelope protection would have been....
