Originally Posted by
RiSq
So - If this was an outright suicide, why not just nose dive and plough it into the ground. Why the 8 minutes of pretty much controlled descent? See, that bit is the bit which doesn't make sense. There was no deviation to the left or right, simply straight down.
Airbus is a less than ideal suicide vehicle.
The flight control laws basically don't allow the pilot to do anything other than a "controlled" descent. A kamikaze style nose down descend is not really feasible with this aircraft unless you can make it switch to direct law - for which there is no button :-)
CVR and ADS-B data indicate that the FO configured the plane to descend as fast as possible, yet as controlled as possible so that the various flight control protections (attitude, high speed) would not kick in and interfere with his CFIT maneuver. We also know that he idled the engines when descending, thus taking away engine thrust as a means for the computer to intervene.
From the looks of it, the FO knew what he was doing exactly.