Accident Investigation
Having worked on a few major aircraft incidents (mainly GA out in the good ol' US of A where GAs crash almost daily due to the FAA not giving a hoot about anything but commercial aviation)..
accidents always happen as a result of a chain of events.
If the flight crew are skilled enough to spot any of the links forming (sometimes they form very quickly) the chain and can stop the formation, then they can prevent the accident. However, if the final link has formed and the aircraft is now in distress (i.e. the damage is done), then only a very skilled flight crew would be able to get the aircraft to safety by using their knowledge, skills and training.
So the AAIB will have to ask themselves,
1) What were the links to this chain that led to the accident?
2) How quickly did those links develop and form the chain?
3) Could the pilots have spotted the forming links early on?
4) Why couldn't the pilots handle the emergency situation?
At the end of the day, you can blame microbursts, a faulty AH, a faulty fuel pump, icing in the B777 fuel-oil heat exchange, etc etc, but it will always be pilot error because they could have and definitely should have avoided this accident if they had
a) spotted the chain of events developing
b) broke that chain of events or failing that
c) used their training, knowledge, skills and something that is rare these days -> common sense <- to have recovered from the emergency
That's my two pence.
And before it kicks off, let me give you an example.
I was in the sim the other day practicing an approach into SFO. It was pretty windy with choppy gusts. There we were flying a visual into SFO and the airspeed was quite unstable and quite high by 2500' callout. I disengaged the AP/FD/AT and left the thrust levers at idle trying to bleed off the excess speed. Down to 500', the aircraft nose is coming up, a sinking sensation kicks in and low and behold, I notice the thrust levers are still at idle. Call for TOGA and off we go (you know the drill; full power, nose up, gear up, flaps 3, etc etc). The sim instructor praised me on avoiding another Asiana at SFO but also praised me on breaking the chain that could have led to an accident!