snom390

I don't know anything about the PPA, but that's not really a good comparison. The taxis that were without insurance were presumably working around the clock to get it sorted out, and had some communication with the PPA to let them know about the problem.

Uber on the other hand knew that what they were doing was illegal from the start, had been warned about it and had every opportunity to delay the launch of the service until the legal stuff was sorted out.

Agreed, and that was one of the recommendations in the report. AFAIK current commercial flight simulators aren't designed to accurately simulate the aircraft outside the normal flight envelope, so pilots can only simulate approach to stall, or a stall that might not accurately represent what will happen with an actual airplane, in contrast to the stall training you do in a light aircraft.

It should have been abundantly clear, however it's not hard to imaging that if you're flying 99% of the time in an airplane that makes it _impossible_ to stall it (ie. pushing back all the way on the stick will not allow it to stall), you might be in a mindset where the possibility of a stall might not even enter your thought.

The fact that the stall warning stopped due to low airspeed and came on again when they pushed the nose forward (because airspeeds became available again and the stall warning started working) only made the problem worse, and can explain why they completely lost the trust in the instruments.

In the end, there's a host of factors and bad design decisions that led up to the accident, and on top of that poor high altitude training.

I think what was pointed out in the report was a lack of training on high altitude hand flying.

The pilots got plenty of stall training, but mostly in take-off / landing scenarios (which is realistically when you're most likely to experience a stall).

Well, there's a reason: Cost.

Certifying and retrofitting force feedback controls on existing Airbus planes will be very expensive, and since the current safety record is so good, it's probably not going to happen unless another accident happens attributable to the same design decision.

They do have a switch to override controls on airbus planes. But of course, that's not much use when both pilots are in panic mode.

AFAIK they could see how the controls were manipulated on the FDR, and I think both pilots actually applied nose-up inputs for some time.

The decision to standardize controls and use fly-by-wire was made for practical reasons. The Airbus philosophy was to use fly-by-wire to make different airplanes of different sizes handle the same, reducing the requirement for pilot training when moving between models.

That in itself doesn't explain the averaging design choice, but it does explain why they decided on the particular fly-by-wire design they have, where in normal law the stick inputs don't have a 1-to-1 correspondance with control surface deflections (like you have on a small airplane for instance).

I'm not saying I agree with the decision, just that you have to put it in context. It would be interesting to go back and see why they chose that design.

Although the failure was basic, and they certainly lacked hands-on high altitude flying experience, you have to consider that the situation they got themselves into became very confusing, to the point where they likely didn't trust any instruments or warnings they got.

The right initial reaction to the situation would _not_ have been to push the nose down, but to add power and a _slight_ nose up input.

However, pulling back on the stick would have been safe to do in normal law, so I think it's very likely that the most inexperienced pilot thought he still had stall protection, and that combined with control inputs that would only be appropriate in lower speed settings caused the initial sequence of events.

No, I don't think it boils down to that. It was just a one of many different design decisions (and philosophies) that has provided a stellar safety record for Airbus planes right up to the point where it contributed to an accident.

Remember that it's easy to criticize such decisions in hindsight, but the decision was taken for a reason, and approved by government agencies at the time.