[Mr Benevolent]

Originally Posted by pclancy

So lets play devils advocate here.

Say the pilot flying had pushed the nose down 5-10 degrees and gone against his instincts, would the aircraft have gained enough speed to come out of the stall and fly again given the already massive rate of descent?

I say instinct because I feel given the aural and visual stall and ECAM warnings, the lack of "belly feeling" of a massive rate of descent, no visual cues and a distrust in the instrumentation, he was at the time flying on instinct alone becuase nothing else around him (or them) made any sense. They had never seen or felt this before.

Simply letting go of the sidestick would have saved the situation up to 30 seconds before impact.

[drdeadlift]

Originally Posted by Confab

Simply letting go of the sidestick would have saved the situation up to 30 seconds before impact.

vertical speed of -10k feet per min hmmmm i think they were well domed t-30 sec

[transylman]

Seems to me the large portion of the blame lies with the young copilot, who seemingly just went into a total panic and had only one response to the situation, pulling back on the stick. Even when told to give up the controls he kept grabbing at the stick and pulling back again. Lesser blame would lie with the other copilot for failing to take control of the situation. The captain would have been the least culpapble imho.

[pclancy]

I wouldnt describe it as total panic, he did that he'd been trained to do and neither of the other two seemed to have any better suggestions.

[cyrusdvirus]

Originally Posted by drdeadlift

vertical speed of -10k feet per min hmmmm i think they were well domed t-30 sec

Think about it.... t-30sec was still 5000 feet..... That's a mile high. There should have been time to recover if he had realised

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by pclancy

I wouldnt describe it as total panic, he did that he'd been trained to do and neither of the other two seemed to have any better suggestions.

With respect pC the aircraft was pitched up to over 20degrees pitch attitude at altitude.....this is not a pitch attitude the 330 goes to at these levels. Loss of speed indications pitch and power are your primary life savers as per the QRH.. 2.5/3 degrees pitch and 93%N1 will save your bacon at these levels not the pitch attitudes flown by AF. My mantra as per previous posts is what the fugh was the capt doing taking his crew rest knowing well that the aircraft was going to be traversing the inter tropical convergence zone with forecast active CBs upto FL450 during his time in the bunk?....

[drdeadlift]

Originally Posted by gatecrash

Think about it.... t-30sec was still 5000 feet..... That's a mile high. There should have been time to recover if he had realised

To regain from a -10k ft/min stall at 5kft requires you to loose altitude to gain speed.So your logic would mean he would have to loose 15k feet a min to gain airspeed(this would reduce your 30 sec to even less.They didn't have the right altitude enough airspeed and were already @ -10k ft min.Im not sure where to draw the line as in deciding where they could have made a recovery.Im glad this isn't a frequent chain of events.

[Bearcat]

And it all drifts back to the Swiss cheese model where all the holes lined up and this sequence began in operations before departure.

[Davidth88]

Thought this article was very interesting .

Basically the report from the Telegraph seems to conclude that if this was a Boeing it would not have happened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...-to-crash.html

I am not going to offer any opinion myself , no expertise .

[cyrusdvirus]

i think they hinted at that before.

From what i read in the article, the fact that there is no physical link between the controls, meant that it was not openly evident what Bonin was doing.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Davidth88

Thought this article was very interesting .

Basically the report from the Telegraph seems to conclude that if this was a Boeing it would not have happened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...-to-crash.html

I am not going to offer any opinion myself , no expertise .

Yeah, I read this article at the w'end as well. Seems that that the "faux" controls that Boeings use may allow better visual cues as to what is happening in the cockpit.