Originally Posted by
H Peacock
... it is perhaps a sign of the times that this aircraft captain lacked the knowledge to even partly understand why his aircraft was doing as commanded and so make a much better job or recovering it to S&L flight.
It is easy to point to a 'lack of knowledge' now, when during the incident itself the crew was completely unable to understand the situation. There is a slowly increasing awareness in the industry of what is termed 'Automation Surprise', the situation where there is a significant gap between the actual workings of the autopilot/FMGS/other automated system and the crew's perception of what the system should be doing at the time. Someone mentioned the startle effect, but this is a more serious situation altogether, and modern FBW systems have been setting us up for this surprise for some time now. In my view this is made worse by the fact that Airbus states on one hand that you should trust the computer to fly you out of a difficult situation, but on the other hand they have had to implement a procedure where you need to switch off said protections (by switching off a few FBW computers) to get you back to a normally functioning airliner in Direct Law if the computer is misbehaving. I am not sure that we can expect our everyday flight crews to recognise the difference every time.
If your mention of 'sign of the times' was relating to this aspect where, by increasing the reliance on computers, we are making it more and more difficult for flight crew to stay in the loop, then I agree.