Hi,

Quite amazing really... But one has to understand the philosophy of the flight control protections, I have flown (and was a training captain) on the Airbus 320/330 type. Before this accident it was believed that you could not stall the aircraft which when in normal law is correct... the flight control computers would not allow you to reach a pitch attitude (nose position) that would lead to the aircraft stalling. In fact part of the conversion course onto the Airbus, one of the exercises was to pull the control column fully back to the stop.

At a certain angle of attack, the flight control computers would stop the nose pitching any higher and automatically put full power on the engines (TOGA) thus flying at a speed just above the stall speed. Unfortunately because of the blocked pitot tubes the aircraft did not have this protection. In my opinion it seems the first officer flying the aircraft at the time did not realize this and continued to keep the stick fully back.

Very sad indeed. and yes lessons have been learned.

Roy

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