It is impossible to make sweeping statements about the fit of an Airbus autoflight system as there are now so many differences available to operators.The EXP feature is surpressed in many of the newer ones and the performance of the Push to Level Off feature of the Vertical Speed mode has led to problems in the past. My operator does not approve of its use.
Airbus now say on their Golden Rules card that if the automation is not behaving as expected do something about it, but working out what is wrong and then finding a correction can be difficult when tired.
It is quite easy to slip into former habits and behaviours in stressful situations and revert to inapproriate actions.
This was an early morning long duty. There is no mention in the report what time the pilots had awoken or how much sleep they had . I always find the first early morning difficult as your body does not want to go to bed early or be woken up when it really wants to be asleep. This,associated with the pressures the Captain had been experiencing due to the company restructure probably meant that he had less than a few hours of restful sleep. I have heard of pilots finding sleep very difficult in similar situations as they struggle to comprehend how they will deal with the sudden loss in pay and the inevitable changes in lifestyle for themselves and their families.As this sort of company reorganisation seems to be spreading across the industry in the UK I believe that there will be a lot of pilots who will empathise with this pilots predicament.