It had been suffering maintenance faults with a key flight control computer for over a week, and one person familiar with the matter said the captain had flown on the same plane with the intermittently faulty device just days before the crash.
The thread tells us that this flight was, exceptionally carrying an engineer as part of the crew. We are also told that FAC problems had been experienced in previous flights with this aircraft, but could not be resolved on the ground. Could it be that ground maintenance as well as flight crew planned in advance to troubleshoot on this flight?
Interesting line of thought. What are the odds that anyone who knows the answer will tell the truth during the investigation? I ask because I have no idea what the culture is in that company.
The pressure by management on engineers NOT to replace items needs looking at in much greater detail.
Will the effort required to look into that be expended, or will "just blame the pilots" be done since it takes less work?
The casual notation: "tested found serviceable" is all-too common in all airlines, and is becoming engineer-speak for "they are complaining about nothing, again". (hint: a bench-test is not the same as a flight test).
I first learned about this due to the frailties of the ARC-27 UHF radio in a T-28. In that ancient era, in the Navy, there was a fault code in the maintenance system that became a sort of short hand for what you describe up there.
Code: A799 (unable to determine/replicate fault)
Comment: Works 4.0 on deck. (4.0 is Navy speak for "excellent.")
Flying and troubleshooting: an exercise in CRM, to be sure.