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[05omegav6]

That Air France crew were so preoccupied on the way down that noone even suggested a Pan Pan declaration, let alone a Mayday shout...


I could never get my head around that bit tbh
At the end of the day, you know you are at height
You know from the seat of your pants that the aircraft hasn't stalled so you push the nose down a little and open the throttles and take stock of the situation.
The captain was supposed to be a highly experienced ex military pilot so I would have thought that his instincts would have taken over, NOT what a few potentially dodgy instrument readings / pitot tube told him 

That saying that the FBW system on the A320 can be overridden ?

The CVR was pretty clear, without ASI detail, they spent nearly fifteen minutes falling out of the sky failing to understand to why their big comfy bus wasn't climbing. Didn't help that the right hand was pulling back and the left hand was trying to put the nose down to gain speed. Captain, in the jump seat, only realised what his crew were doing as the aircraft dropped below 500ft with the vertical speed off the gauge. Last words were summat like, "You've killed us..."

By it's very nature, Fly by wire has no mechanical back up, merely alternative wiring... The Flight computer, on the other hand...

[Lizzie_Zoom]

Just found a body of the coast of Borneo wearing a life jacket

Imo, the A 320 - 200 has being around for donkeys years and combine that with the general penny pinching / maintenance record of most operators, i'm going for massive structural failure caused by being bounced about by the storm he was trying to avoid 

That has now been denied.

[Kevin Wood]

That Air France crew were so preoccupied on the way down that noone even suggested a Pan Pan declaration, let alone a Mayday shout...

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. The first of those was challenging them to 100% workload and they were failing. Quite right that nobody wasted time with conversation.

I could never get my head around that bit tbh
At the end of the day, you know you are at height
You know from the seat of your pants that the aircraft hasn't stalled so you push the nose down a little and open the throttles and take stock of the situation.
The captain was supposed to be a highly experienced ex military pilot so I would have thought that his instincts would have taken over, NOT what a few potentially dodgy instrument readings / pitot tube told him 

That saying that the FBW system on the A320 can be overridden ?

Yep, any pilot ought to be able to set a power setting and pitch angle that will make the aircraft basically fly without reference to any other instruments.

I reckon the airbus avionics sent so many confusing signals to the pilots, with every indication based on a number of inputs to the system, that the pilots didn't actually figure out what was wrong. That and the fact that one pilot can work against another without any indication what is going on...

[05omegav6]

Not helped by crew panic... well that and the computer not being able to function when receiving duff sensor information coupled with confused control inputs. The computer on the Air France flight eventually shut itself down after the crew failed to acknowledge any of the alarms... the captain at no point took control.

Total loss of ASI is surely a standard refresher test item?