The French version of the Interim Report No 3 shows the complete and utter confusion on the flight deck with the crew receiving continious and multiple warnings and the PF completely unaware that his inputs have put the aeroplane into a dangerous climb.

During the descent, with the aeroplane stalled, the crew are again confused. The PF is told he is climbing by the PNF and he responds by lowering the nose only to then receive the stall warning!

I now understand why they failed to action the ECAM; because the failures were changing rapidly before their eyes.

I can only suspect that the PF was hopelessly distracted from his primary task which of course was to fly the aeroplane!

A sobering lesson to us all - fly the aeroplane, using attitude and power only if necessary.

Before Landing Check List;

I heartily and sadly agree.
Seen all three types of crew members
since early glass (B757) transition from
"steam gauge" (B727) to retirement (2007).
FBW (Fly by wire) vs. FBP (Fly by pilot)

Let me further state that the group 2 people are just in for the job. They even may feel a touch intimidated by the aircraft. They really have no interest in sharpening their pilot skills (There is really no need right) however they do take great pains in knowing company SOP’s verbatim (since the SOP’s will cover your butt in all circumstances right? Also knowing them as such will give a little bit of a false sense of security) they also know every note, warning, highlighted and bold print in the FM (not a bad thing at all) however they are not only not capable in keeping the ball centered when yaw damp is taken away on short final but they do not know it is displaced in the 1st place. Tell me there are no captains and crew who do not fit this picture. I dare you.

That was quick, I think I hit an exposed nerve there eh?

Thanks jcjeant for the full report link. It took a couple of hours to read it. I'm impressed by the notion of confusion sorted out from the transcript of the CVR and for the pilot's actions during those four minutes before impact. But I'm much more impressed by the avalanche of contradicting feelings they went through.

I remember when I was flying "honest" aircrafts. A failure was really a "single" failure. One would continue flying the bird while PNF or FE would sort out the check-list. Today, a "simple failure" may turn a good day into an holocaust.

Those pilots never realized they were in a Stall.
It started out with poor airmanship and ended the way we all know.

All three of them were very confused and unable to "read" what was going on.
The PF, (the first-officer on the RH Seat) even stated so, at least twice: (…)
and he is still on doubt about what was going on at time: 2h12:04..07
(Spoilers were even deployed by this time, but the second officer told him not to deploy them).

IMHO contributing factors were:
- the decision of the Captain to take his resting period before crossing ITCZ;
- poor airmanship;
- the Stall Warning logic (intermittent behavior);
- the complexity of the FBW system
- lack of AoA information
- poor handling proficiency

Hope we all learn from that.
Hope been-counters will learn something also.

Not likely, their actuarial tables will simply have a different entry datum. :mad:

Don't get me started ...

I admit that after a couple of years observation of these threads I value the comments and discussions here more than reading the actual reports and I haven't read today's release. We have a fair knowledge of what the crew did. They did what they did because it relected their appreciation of the situation and following that, their apparently appropriate response. The important thing is surely to understand why they didn't understand the true dynamic state of the aircraft. Without that knowledge nothing that follows is likely to ever be of any use. The upshot is surely that they didn't realise they were stalled. Your question to the technologists is surely how could you design a system that would let that happen ?

Maybe, and yes

Not sure I agree - they original warnings appear to have been ignored or discounted. If anything, intermittency might lead to more chance of recognition. It appears they thought they were overspeed and distrusted most or all instruments and did not believe the stall warning. I think there is a good chance they would have disbelieved a continuous warning all the way down too.

Why ? As far as I can see from the info we have now, if they had done the same in conventional controlled a/c the result would ahve been the same.

Would they have looked at it ? Would they have trusted it (remembering it would have gone invalid at some points) ?

System failed the pilots by a lack of training - or at least BEA seem to think so.

So what should the aircraft have done differently? One frequent point of criticism is the deactivation of the stall warning at low speeds. That's arguably not a very good idea, yet it should be noted that the pilots managed to ignore nearly a minute of continuous stall warning without the message sinking in...
Another point also picked up by BEA is the lack of an AoA display. Would it have helped? Maybe. But they seem to have looked at only very few indications at all and could make sense of even fewer. My hunch is those who would know what an AoA gauge was telling them in a situation like this wouldn't need one in the first place to figure out 10000fpm down + nose up = oh sh.t.

The transcript is so depressing. It reads like PF didn't only not recognize the stall, but at that moment (I'm sure sitting at is desk, browsing PPRuNe things would have been quite different) he seemed to be totally oblivious to even the concept of stall:

"Qu’est-ce qu’y… comment ça se fait qu’on continue à descendre à fond là?"

"Mais je suis à fond à cabrer depuis tout à l’heure"

"Je cabre ?" - "Ben il faudrait on est à quatre mille pieds"
:(

pitch and power
 

I said it a while back and I'll say it again.
Pitch and power.
The PFD or whatever you want to call it in your EFIS aircraft is 2 separate instruments. Pitot-static tapes and IRS center. If the speed tape is telling you overspeed and the altitude is climbing what is your attitude?
If the PF had only put the thing on the horizon with cruise thrust would they not had a chance of recognising the nature of the failure?
Who needs AOA if they just understand this very basic concept?

Apologies, I presumed by "here" you meant "on this forum". I have to say I've never encountered anyone who was, or claimed to be, a pilot on here who was completely happy with letting the automation take all the strain and letting their basic piloting skills atrophy.

Not at all sir. I suggest you read what I'm actually saying (and have said consistently on here for 5 years) before tarring me with that brush. I have always said it is *imperative* that basic stick-and-rudder skills be maintained and that pilots should have a knowledge base relating to the type or types they are operating that is as complete as humanly possible. I think it's dispiriting and borderline scandalous that the airline industry sometimes treats its crews with so little respect and that it is as engaged in the "race to the bottom" as any other industry you care to name - see a rant I made on this very topic here:

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/43780...ml#post6183737

Ultimately the aeronautical, mechanical and software engineers who design and build the aircraft you fly in and the systems that make them tick have at least as much professional pride in their work as you do. The concept of computers replacing pilots in our lifetime has only ever come from press hyperbole, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find the engineers who would want to take on that responsibility. In short, we're on the same freakin' side.

Neither did the Birgenair PF, who was not only a senior captain, but an ex-military jock to boot. This is all about how the human brain reacts under pressure and stress, and the truth is that none of us can know how we'll react in a situation that perilous until we're confronted with it. The hope is that training for this kind of upset will be reinforced and expedited, along with proper CRM procedures to follow.

[QUOTE][The PF made a nose-up left input on the sidestick to the
stop that lasted around 30 seconds./QUOTE]

If I was in a right hand turn nose down, think I might try that.

#1 airspeed indicator was unreliable for 29 seconds.

Stby airspeed indicator was unreliable for 54 seconds.

Posted by Doze
Humans… Rare entities are those… Aren´t they Doze?
Anyhow… I´m overwhelm with the grace society degrades…
We all degrade in the same graceful way. Economy degrades graceful pulling everybody in its way down, with its poor philosophy and short-minded short-term get it all, get it fast! dogma.
“Graceful degrading systems” and their redundancy have shown that they aren´t able to cope with nature… They all kicked off and gave the “bad trained pilots” the joystick… Very graceful degrade strategy indeed… A mirror of the self made, bad communication and … culture.
Radar catching-up bad weather (way before bad weather becomes an issue), becomes degraded, certainly at the moment an ETOPS ops is going on. Super Cold water? What is that? Satellites monitoring and pitot tubes designed to cope with… What? What was their task? Well, I would say awesome performance in graceful degrade!
Graceful companies and developers all the way down, which keep pilots as slaves afraid to talk?
Just give me a graceful break will you!
Nobody here is against automation and development methinks. Rather we all are seeking for an answer. The answer which came from BEA nevertheless, is more than I´d expected…
I truly hope ALL pilot unions around the world will discuss this event deeply in order to improve aviation to it best.
It isn´t only an AF issue… It seems to me a worldwide policy instead…


I´m thankful to all of you, which during this long passing years, kept their minds sharp and were seeking for an answer. Also thanks to this forum which made it possible!

DW you are right about this and I apologize for my comment. I also do not mean to come across that the pilots on flight 447 were in anyway incompetent. That would not be fair at all since I was not there and whom am I to judge. I do not like the system nor the training department. You have to know that throughout the whole incident those pilots used every ounce of their collective knowledge and experience and this one time it was not enough.
Could I have done any better? I am 53 years old and still flying. Luckily I have reached the point to be able to say I am not as good as one time I pretended to be. I know now the system (training department) does not and cannot cover all the bases and since we know this we must try to cover the gaps the best that we can. That is our responsibility we have to ourselves, each other and to the passengers who fly with us.
No, maybe I could not or would not have done better. We are only speculating here and that is not really bad since we are learning still (whether we admit it or not) from each other. I have never been in an unknown situation (flying or not) for that long amount of time with all those insidious conflicting information, we really do not know how we would have reacted especially when you throw in the "dark and stormy" bit with several hundred people in the back. Sometimes simulators do not simulate very well since that cannot simulate real fear other then the fear of your loss of ticket. Not the same at all is it?
Until bean counters quit ruling the earth which I do not think is going to happen anytime soon we have to stick together and do the best we can with the crap we are given.

Good day gentlemen.

I do not think this is a totally fair statement. Fortunately I have about have my time divided between military and civilian flying. I have seen gross muck ups on both sides. The military does seem to lack in imagination (as a very general rule so don't yell at me) and the civilians (Again as a very general rule so don't yell at me) sometimes lack in consistency in training.
It is our job as individuals as we mature is to see these faults in ourselves and fix them the best as we can. We need to take recurrent (even initial) courses ourselves from outside sources, try your hand at another type of flying (not as a job mind you but with a friend or just pay out of your own pocket. We should try to see outside of our ruts and think about what we see.

Takata, pardon ma inexpérience: is that a flap actuator or a stabilizer one?

Merci

Image at 2286

Is that screw shaft bent?

BEA

I am only repeating what has already been discussed but the thread is so long,its hard to find the fundamentals and keep your bearings.AeroCaraibe suffered an almost identical incident(s) just prior to AF447 and a lengthy report was issued.Same Aircraft,same pitots,same icing encounter,same language.Why then was it not disseminated,digested and trained on?

The key line in the AeroCaraibe report(French language only) says:
"En effet,le 'PF' est intimement persuade que les deux alarmes 'STALL' sont inappropriees.C'est volontairement qu'il ne tient pas compte de la phrase 'RESPECT STALL WARNING AND DISREGARD RISK OF UNDUE STALL WARNING STATUS MESSAGE IF DISPLAYED ON ECAM."

The AeroCaraibe pilot used a KNOWLEDGE-BASED response to loss of airpseed and spurious STALL warning associated with pitot icing.Fly pitch and power,2.5 deg ANU and 82% N1.My question is that even if the AF PF was unable to disbelieve his instruments and ignore any spurious warning,why did he pitch the aircraft to 10deg+ ANU?At FL350???Would not the instinct be to fly TOGA and 0-2.5 ANU pitch?And then find himself in overspeed after the icing clears(only 50 seconds)?This is very confusing.Someone said that FBW pilots apply TOGA and full ANU on the stick in response to stall.Now he acknowledges ALT LAW(ie.a/c can stall unprotected..is that right?) yet goes for 10+ANU pitch at 35000 feet?
Pitot-static anomalies are not easy for pilots;you have to ignore your instruments affected by the blocked sensor and maintain concentration on pitch/power through a cacophony of aural/visual alerts,some valid,some not.Experienced crews have been flummoxed by conflicting information as seen in Aeroperu and Birgenair.Use a rule-based response at your own peril.But those crews did exactly that.And there was a Captain sitting in the left seat on both flights,although an umbrella of suspicion is certainly cast over the quality of the Birgenair crew(he continued the takeoff with an AS disagree).

The two Airbus anomalies here(THS stuck at 13ANU and stall inhibited below 60),although contentious,should never ever have come into play.Lets assume that we cant expect two co-pilots to apply a KNOWLEDGE-BASED response to a high altitude unreliable airspeed event at night over the Atlantic.They are fooled by the conflicting information despite the fact that they knew they were flying at M.8 just moments prior.They now believe they're in a stall.They believe whats presented in front of them.Then there should not have been any ANU pitch command and hence no auto trim to 13 degrees,no speed(real) decay and no possibility whatsoever of stall inhibit.They should have found themsleves in an overspeed condition after the pitot unblocked which may/may not have led to inflight break-up.This would have been plausible,even forgiveable.All they had to do was do what the AeroCaraibe crew did.Set 81% N1 and put the nose just above the horizon.It was flying before with those settings,it will continue to do so.

Please look at the BEA website.
There is a new press statement/synthesis of the accident. There is also some recommendations regarding pilot training for high alt stalls, and a recommendation that all aircraft display A of A data.

Personally, I'm concerned at the absence of comment on pilot/aircraft interface factors- in particular, regarding the loss of speed data resulting in a situation where correct stall recovery actions appear to have led to a reactivation of the stall warning. At that moment, it seemed to be the last chance for these poor people.

My friends in the industry none the less assure me that fyling attitude strictly, with minimal changes to any control inputs, would have saved the day.

I would also be interested in any comments as to how the alarm/alert system may interact with a disorientated pilot to produce responses that generate additional risk in emergency situations.

Hi Poire,
THS screw and actuator... and it was a test in order to verify that Bearfoil was really off for vacation. (He could not have refrained from posting as he is quite obsessed with this piece of metal).

Seems you don't have to. But, it's so, so easy to fly those last few minutes from the comfort of one's armchair. It must have been enough to throw a good mind into chaos for a moment or two, but for those with very limited time handling real hardware in extreme conditions, it seems what they had in front of them was more than they could unravel. It takes a lot of willpower to shut out a vista of sophisticated equipment and concentrate on one small and comparatively primitive device.


BBC News - Air France Rio crash: Pilots 'lacked training'

Sorry, very ignorant person confused here.

Did they not have an attitude indicator/artificial horizon working (I thought that they did)? Would that not have shown that they were markedly pitched up and given them a clue to what was going on?

As far as I know after some weeks torn from the internet, the standby horizon was unaffected by the computer derived errors. Although the main systems were probably okay, the idea of the standby is that its power supply should be maintained and its internal workings unaffected by the plethora of information inputs. If in doubt, check that little unit.

Just a video of a random 330. Start just after a minute in. Worth looking at the scan of first the standby horizon, then captain's screen, then it goes through standby to the right. A bank has been started.

Even the standby is electronic. I would love to see a gyro in there somewhere.



Probably a translation plus press-speak, but some of the dialog must be from the transcripts. Totally horrifying.


Cockpit terror of jet's 38,000ft death plunge - News, Frontpage - Herald.ie

Just reading the NY Times report on this (http://goo.gl/IKmQy), which ends with a paragraph that says:

First, this just so elemental it seems to be rediculous. But that last sentence really surprised me. In my extremely limited experience as a GA pilot, I was always taught that the first thing you do when approaching a stall is lower the nose. Can someone explain why the "standard procedure" has been to raise the nose?

So far there are no 'hints' either that the main attitude displays were affected at all.
Not relevant here, but the "old-fashioned" electro-mechanical standby AH would remain stable and reliable (because of the high gyro rotor speed) for minutes after everything else went "kerplunk". It's still credited with saving a Caravelle when the entire electric systems went belly-up.

----

Not quite random, since it has an independent 3-inch standby A/I. The AF A330 that crashed had an "ISIS", a bigger standby 'instrument cluster' on a separate screen (there should be a photo somewhere on this or the other AF447 thread). Hence I assume the video was not of an Air France A330.

I don't know what the type/manufacturer of that particular standby A/I is.
But I think that you'll discover the old and well-known fully electro-mechanical SFENAs have now left the stage, but that behind that electronic display there's still an independent gyro. Switching to an electronic display just made the mechanical bits simpler....

The dialogue that the Herald quotes is indeed based on translated excerpts from the transcripts.

I believe the (flawed) training analysis is along the lines that if you learn to recognize the onset of the stall early enough, then an increase in thrust (and hence airspeed) will fly you out of the stall threshold WITHOUT any reduction in altitude or requirement for a nose down attitude.

The flaw in this training philosophy is that it assumes you will always recognize and react at early stall onset, so the full stall never develops. If you never couple this training with full stall recovery techniques, eventually pilots end up not knowing what to do if a full stall develops.

This originates in flawed training analysis where the fear of losing any height at all during stall recovery on an approach has the effect of removing the basic skills required to recover from a fully developed stall.

Yes, I think it is based however, on a full compliment of engines running at say, cruise power, and an attitude that wouldn't be that much of a change when hurriedly pulling to +5. The power increment could then be metered out by erm, skilled judgment.

The crew were perhaps dealing with not only vigorous turbulence, but also more than a few man-made excursions from the horizontal. Also trying to recognize a stall with massive lifting and down-droughts would certainly be very much more difficult. Stalled one moment, and flying with reduced wing loading the next.


What I find hard to understand is the 'Deep Stall' nature of this decent. There does not seem to have been a succession of conventional stalls, yet the aircraft is not one of the T tailed types that could lock one into such a decent. I can only conclude a lot of time was spent with the systems blurring the issue, indeed applying power with vectored thrust 'shaping' the angle of stabilization to some deceptive angle.

Is there a clear recording of the flight-deck ambient noise? Once height was reduced enough to give a good gap between stall speed and overspeed, the ambient noise would have been quite different. The silence should have been deafening.

The previous recovery procedure was based on the fact that all widebody aircraft with hi bypass engines is capable of stall recovery with minimal altitude loss due to quick engine response and massive thrust. If slats is extended at the same time the aircraft can be flown out of the stall without altitude loss if at low level.

An A330 in degraded law at high altitude stalls at 7 degrees AoA (vs 15 degrees at low altitude), max thrust = climb thrust, and the recovery pitch is somewhere between 0 to -5 degrees and requires 4000´if done correctly. If you do not initiate recovery promptly, but hold the stick back, lack of elevator response will cause the THS to trim nose up, just as the report suggest.

In this situation, if the AoA becomes extreme, you may have to use rudder to get the nose down, and it takes a very low nose down attitude to unload and regain airflow.

Now, with this attitude (more than 20 degrees n.d.), once the airflow is back, the acceleration is huge - especially in manual TOGA - and you [B]must[B] start a smooth recovery immediately while avoiding over-stress ( fortunately the Airbusses have g-meters), secondary stalls and Vmo excursion. Vd excursion with structural failure is a distinct risk.

Recently, we have done the AF profile a number of times in a very good CAE SIM: recovery is possible at 37000´if done properly. After holding the stick back and letting the THS trim aft, the ensuing deep stall is IMHO not recoverable for the average line pilot, and that brings up a new question:

To which extreme situations shall we select and train commercial line pilots?

Oh, we all want to keep our cosy straight-and-level job, and the operator just want to fill a seat, so the mental break point SIM assessments has gone out of fashion, and no one knows if the co-pilot is really up to it, if the poop hits the fan.

What is left is training, and while some operators are doing a great job, some are not, partly because proper high altitude recovery training takes time, and the allocated training time is already full of NPA, V1 cuts, ECAM work, Evacuations etc. etc.....

Hopefully this tragic event will trigger some thoughts in the training departments and among the regulators, so we can swop some of the endless checklist reading with some hands-on training. Getting extra time....? In your dreams.....

And BTW, 25 years ago I initiated a hi-level training program for the old captains; many of them didn´t have a clue of what was going on up there unless they had survived a tour on one of the "interesting" fighter types of the day, and only a few of them had actually recovered from a stall in the Starfighter, the Phantom, the Lightning or the Mirage.

Correct me if I am wrong (I'm sure someone will!) but I thought the revised stall recovery was as a consequence of the 737 stall on approach into Bournemouth and similar incidents which application of TOGA could cause an uncontrollable pitch couple especially if out of trim?

B4-Landing said:
:D Thanks B4

Vertical acceleration trace is not consistent with flying through turbulence. There is +1.6 G spike as the aeroplane starts its climb, after that, it remains between +1.25 and +0.7G for the remainder of the flight.

Trimmable horizontal stabilizer went to maximum nose up deflection. For most of the upset, both elevators were at their maximum nose-up deflection, too. Twice they start moving towards nose-down, first prompted by command from RH stick, second time by LH, but they only get halfway to neutral before new pull on the sidestick sends them back to their NU stops. Seemingly FBW was in Altn law so elevators were trying to satisfy G demand from pilot controls. It goes to show that even when there's no direct stick displacement to control deflection things work out in quite conventional way.

Have to wonder if the FB(in the left seat) and CA(jumpseat after returning to cockpit?) could tell that the FO had the stick in the full nose up position?

With a sidestick, especially at night, I wonder if anyone could see the FO's sidestick inputs?

I work for a major oil/gas and petrochemical company and a fair amount of my job involves investigating what we call catastrophic events. For this reason I follow investigations into civil aviation accidents as they are probably the best investigated accidents available and, generally, set a standard for other industries.

I have a background in military and sport aviation although not commercial flying.

This interim report from BEA has resulted in headlines in the press that basically lays the fault/blame on the crew. Indeed, it would seem that errors were made and I can see at least 6 of DuPont's Dirty Dozen raising their combined heads above the parapet. No doubt the cockpit transcript will provide excellent training in Human Factors in the future. Sad but true.

I have no idea of the BEA's remit in terms of how far it can go in a proper RCA of this event. So far we seem to have a good idea as to the WHAT and the WHO. However, when we get to the WHY we have the all too common finger pointing at the training system. Sure, a failure in training can be rectified relatively easily if the will and money is there. However, my view is that this is an easy cop out and that the true root cause can be disguised all to easily by following this route.

So, let's ask ourselves a further WHY: Why had the training system NOT identified the need to train pilots to deal especially in the light of previous events as well as known reliability issues with the pitots.

I would like to see this next step taken. There was clearly a decision making (or, more likely, a lack of decision making) process involved here that may be the real root cause of this tragic event. Was complacency also a factor here?

Lastly, I find AF's comments re the lack of AoA indications (is not the stall warning an AoA indicator?) specious and more likely made in what will no doubt be a blame game between Airbus and AF decided in the courts.

Do that! Don´t dare to doubt please! It will pay out in time... It is just a question of time... Dare to invest in the future, but... Don´t be afraid... You have a lot of good ppl going around.... You are one of them :)

De nada dude.:ok:

I deleted my prior post because frankly it was hot-tempered. Let me try to be more civil and to the point.

At this stage in the aviation industry's development it is clear that airline accidents have become nothing more than blame game with software designer/engineers on one side, hardware manufactures on the other, and the pilots stuck right in the middle. Rather than either of the primary culprits taking responsibility the industry's response to every accident is to trot out PILOT TRAINING as the grand panacea that will cure all the ills.

This accident is the poster child for pilots taking the heat when the real culprits are (a) poorly thought out software design decisions and (b) flaky hardware. That doesn't mean that I think the pilots performance was mistake free. But it's obvious that they were set up to fail and MOAR TRAINING is not the answer to the problem.

Bear, maybe the (or A problem) is software is needed for basic functions. I do think that if there were some real instruments requiring hardware such as a tube that was relaying ram air pressure from the outside DIRECTLY to the inside to an instrument which would translate that to a circular scale and call this an IAS dial, and somewhere close to it have a real gyro to give attitude information with a battery back up and another one with another tube DIRECTLY reading the pressure outside the aircraft to another circular dial and call this an altimeter. Then SOMEWHERE on the panel mount these where the computer operators can see them and before they climb into the cockpit give them training on how/when to use them. While you are at it have a freaking big red button between the seats that when pushed there is no right stick did this, left stick did that and if the moon is at a certain light level and it is Tuesday the software still may or may not give you what you ask for and in doing so the computer operators now turn into pilots. :ugh:

Face it, the freakin system as a whole was designed to eliminate pilot mistakes. It was not expressly designed to lighten workload, was already had all we needed for that. Not only was it to eliminate our possible mistakes but to also cover up our lack of basic flying skills with designers and software engineers who thought they knew more then we did on how an aircraft is supposed to be operated. We were sold a wagon full of crap now we must do our best to operated within this absurd criteria.

Dudes you need to rise up with your unions and take your positions back, this is not working.
Now let us hear the bitching from the My god is my software and I shall covet no other people.

I had already asked you this earlier, but now that we have a much more detailed record of 447s final minutes maybe you're ready to answer - at which point didn't "the software" give them what they asked for?

Zorin, hold on a sec. I did miss your prior question to me. So here goes an answer flown an AB aircraft;
Flight 296 in Paris. I do not think the pilots flew into those trees on purpose.

Quoted from misd-again

So if you were to jump into the right seat and pushed forward on the stick whom would the computer attempt to obey? Either way somebody would not be getting what they asked for and worse that person would never know because there is no feedback. They would just be assuming for whatever reason the inputs they were trying to give were not working now it is time for plan B, C, D etc. All of this happens in seconds adding to the confusion. So you end up with the left hand not talking with the right hand and the computer through lack of feedback not talking with either of them.

Do you think the pilots wanted the THS to go full ANU or do you think the computer assumed one (not both) of the pilots wanted it? I say both because who really has command when the side sticks are displaced in different locations? I really do not know.

In fairness to the PF (whichever one it was) the only 'nose-up input' he (The PF) applied at the onset of the accident was immediately after the sign-off. The BEA states that the 'zoom climb' started at least 11 seconds after that - and there is no mention of the PF moving the stick either way until he applies 'nose-down' to counteract the climb. Does this mean the PF did not cause the climb but it takes several seconds for the AB330 to respond to control movements?