Originally Posted by groundfloor
It would be interesting to see what the flying pilots last manually flown approaches looked like in respect of pitch and roll inputs.
For non Airbus pilots - your seat armrest position is critical so that your inputs are correct, if the armrest is forgotten up accurate inputs to the side stick are virtually impossible as you are making inputs with your arm instead of your wrist. If the armrest is down but not setup for you then it's really hard as well.
Actually his inputs on the departure up to the point where A/P was engaged should be available on the DFDR record, but that was not released in the accident report.
Going back to grity's stick movement chart.
The first point I would like to make is that the initial stick move which begins at 7 seconds is not just lateral but is instead diagonal to the left and aft. Sort of a wrist curl leading to a further finger push to the left. This would be too early in the event to be making a conscious decision to climb the aircraft as part of a procedure. He must have been in reaction mode, not a planning mode.
At that point in time, all Bonin knew is that the autopilot had dropped out and that the aircraft needed a roll correction to the left. The reason for the aft stick could be explained as simultaneously trying to pick up the nose to regain the indicated 300 or so feet lost when the airspeeds were rejected, but in actuality, that probably is not the reason!
Consider this. If Bonin is a stick pulse correction type pilot, why is he maintaining the stick almost exclusively in the range of 4 to 8 degrees aft stick while making mostly large (pulsing) lateral corrections?
This suggests that his inner tension was being reflected as an inadvertent aft stick pressure. (Never mind, Dozy, if it takes a fair amount of force to do this, we are talking about a guy who is really on edge already and has just fallen into an unfamiliar flight condition) The adrenaline is kicking in.
Then finally at 15.9 seconds and at 17.2 seconds, he begins making nose down pulses while traversing the stick to the right. Finally! A pitch motion that seems in character with his assumed style of flying. Does that prove the almost constant aft stick position was inadvertent. No. But it sure does suggest it.
This is why I would greatly like to see the DFDR traces from the period just after the takeoff to further characterize his style. How can we get access to the initial manual flight portion of the DFDR record? Who do we write to? Is BEA free to release it or is it now up to the court?