Originally Posted by
Machinbird
Take HEALY's points on Airbus computer re-set philosophy and consider that Airbus engineers gave the computers dominance over the pilots in their operational concept. That you and I think this is foolish has no bearing on what has transpired already. We may only be able to influence what direction future aircraft designs take.
I suspected early on that QZ8501 was going to be a man/machine authority horror story and so far, I am not dissuaded from that viewpoint.
I'd like to point out that without the FDR data, we readers do not know when the FAC shutdown attempt occurred relative to the flight control problems. The sooner they can publish the FDR readouts, the sooner we can begin to properly wrap our minds around what caused this accident.
We can already surmise a lot from the lack of reaction from Airbus who already know all there is to know of the DFDR/CVR recordings. There have been no urgent ADs issued by Airbus as one would expect if something had 'failed'. So we know that in Airbus' view the aircraft worked as expected.
So I tend to agree with Machinbird that although Airbus thinks that the aircraft worked as expected, the crew may not have had that opinion at the time. Were they trying to fix a zoom climb by pulling the FACs - is that the action for frozen AOA vanes? If they dropped into Alternate Law - from the AFR447 thread - the roll is far more sensitive than pitch - is that the case in the A-320? In trying to fix a problem did they put themselves into a test of their hand-flying the A-320 IMC, at height, in severe turbulence and in alternate law?