If any safety technology deserves credit here it's seatbelts. From the sound of it, nobody who was belted in was injured.
The automation very possibly saved lives here. The overspeed protection is good because had that not happened, there's a real possibility that significant sections of the airplane would have sheared off, or the airplane could have rapidly drifted further out of control as it accelerated quickly through 365 knots indicated. Big, heavy, thrusting things gain airspeed rapidly when you pitch them down 18 degrees at cruise power, and the margin of recoverability is very minimal. There are arguments that humans are unable to prevent some scenarios in that situation because by the time higher-order thinking on decisions has happened, it's too late. See, for example, the surprisingly lengthy duration of time between the incident and setting for idle, which probably should have been among the first things done in response. Brains are slow when things happen fast, and a symphony of alarms and whoops (undoubtedly in progress) does not help.
A Boeing would not have intervened in the situation at all and would have allowed the aircraft to go overspeed, risking serious airframe damage. If you crash dive an airliner at cruising speed, very, very bad things happen. At cruising altitude safety envelopes are very small. The paragraph talking about direct law is, roughly speaking, what would have happened had this been a Boeing aircraft. (This isn't bad, it's just different philosophies of pilot responsibility. I'm not partisan on the difference like some pilots and am willing to acknowledge the benefits of both approaches; this one is an Airbus advantage.)
Boeing uses traditional controls. It's like a race car steering wheel on a big movable stick. It is really easy to see how the control is positioned.
Airbus uses a small joystick off to the side. It is force-based like a Thinkpad pointing stick, so it barely moves when you push on it. It isn't easy to see if the device is being pushed.
Here, a camera got jammed against the joystick. The pilot nearly made things worse by putting the aircraft in "direct law" mode because he couldn't tell that his own control was causing the problem. In the case of Air France Flight 447, the pilot's idiotic control input was not visible to the two other people in the cockpit.
Airbus will obviously brush this one under the carpet as well, because admitting that the side-stick control is hazardous would cause a need for drastic retrofit of all Airbus aircraft cockpits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Sidestic...
I've flown an A320 in a full-size simulator and my experience with its sidestick, even in that simulator environment, does not match what you are describing. The sidestick moves quite far and quite noticeably[0], and does not behave like a ThinkPad. The aircraft simply ignores drastic input, which might be what you're thinking of with that assessment?
Anyway, I'd imagine if I were PIC of this flight and my aircraft suddenly pitched down 18 degrees, the sidestick would be the first thing I'd look at in about the first 750 milliseconds. Not sure why that didn't happen here, but I tend not to judge pilots from accident reports, so I have't put a lot of thought into it. I can't imagine a scenario where any camera could conceal itself in that arrangement, unless the A330 has huge voids under the stick that the A320 does not. Even stopping short of judging the PIC, I have a hard time imagining an outcome where this is an Airbus control flaw, no matter the (as one can see, passionate) opinions on sidestick.
Boeing undoubtedly does that one aspect correctly: Regardless of the type of stick the two inputs are linked so if the captain is giving strange input it would be <i>immediately</i> obvious to the copilot. There is no reason Airbus couldn't implement the same system on their sidesticks.
The fact that conflicting input causes the system to ignore both seems like downright insanity and based on the assumption of one input being defective, rather than conflict between pilots. A simple fix might be to include a hand detection mechanism and ignore input from the stick that doesn't have a hand present unless it is the only input and is not overridden.
There have been many cases of pilots turning the yoke the wrong way [1], or shutting down the wrong engine [2] which are levers in full view of both pilots and not getting immediately picked up.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nCvO_QlEm8 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways_Flight_235
In the case of Crossair 498 (your first link), the copilot knew the captain was turning the wrong. Having linked controls, it is surprising he didn't take over. One of the conclusion was that there was a communication problem between the two pilots due to language barrier [2]. The copilot never gave any input to the controls, so the direct link controls were not an issue.
I'm not sure what how TransAsia 235 is linked to the issue discussed here, OP (tropo) didn't say that Boeing's approach prevents all pilot errors, but that mechanically linked controls have the advantage of letting one pilot know exactly what the other is doing, and give him a chance to intervene.
There is no question that computers doing most of the flying have improved reliability tremendously, but misinterpretation between computers and pilot of what the other is doing has been recognised has an issue and is something the aviation industry is focusing on right now.
[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a3115/what-really-hap...
The fact that this happens at all makes me think that there could have been a hardware malfunction or that something got wedged forcing the stick back ever so slightly. So FO says "why are you pulling back?" and SO doesn't even respond since his hand isn't on the control.
In this case the Boeing system wouldn't have stepped in, granted. But in this case the Boeing system also wouldn't have let things get so far so fast. It's much, much harder to accidentally jam a big control yoke so far forwards. It would also take more than the weight of a camera to do so.
The title should read "Airbus' automated flight control conflict resolution system saves plane from problem that Airbus' poor cockpit design allowed to happen in the first place" but that's not catchy.
Not a criticism - I am a former commercial pilot, and I know just how hard identifying the bad engine in an asymmetric situation is - but it is an illustrative case that in a high workload situation, having visible controls that both pilots can see/access is not always as helpful as one would imagine.
OTOH it's probably a lot harder to "jam" a camera into the center stick of a Boeing than it is into the side-stick of a Bus.
I truly don't understand the Airbus approach... There is no method of resolving conflicts between the sticks that make sense... Sum them? Average them? Take the last seen input? Prefer the left side always?
In the AF 447 case, the left pilot did take priority, but the dude on the right took it back. Had the left one taken it and held it (by keeping the button pressed), the accident might have been avoided. So the system is hardly foolproof, and one can argue about the particular implementation of the interface and the merits vis-a-vis hardware-linked yokes, but any notion that Airbus haven't thought carefully about it is complete bogus.
http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3455/why-is-the-...
Multi-master is a tricky problem to solve. When it comes to flying a plane, sitting here in my armchair, I think the the simpler solution (linked yokes) is likely the better one.
So:
* KISS... but:
* Airbus engineers are certainly aware of it, though... but:
* they have thousands of Airbuses deployed out in the field though with the current tech, so it's unlikely to be changed anytime soon.
Is even more training the answer? Dunno.
My take:
Today's jets are incredibly well designed and safe. If something goes wrong, though, still better to have rather competent crew sitting at the pointy end.