Uh? The UI was giving them plenty of warnings and alerts. They have supposedly been trained thoroughly on all of this.
(I guess they could go for the gravity deployment backup mode, but that would be rather extreme option for a broken solonoid (or so on) on a control lever).
I can't believe anyone is defending the current UI given we have an obvious example right in front of us of how it can fail.
Well, it's also an example of the saying "when you make something foolproof, God invents a better fool". They made enough mistakes here it's clear these pilots were a ticking time bomb; the only way we're fully preventing that issue is to replace pilots entirely with an AI.
Just because we have an "obvious example right in front of us" does not mean it is the only failure mode that needs to be considered in the design of the system.
It is not sufficient to point out “obvious deficiencies”, one must also point out possible improvements. As other posters (with more patience than I can muster) have pointed out, it is not obvious how to improve this. Putting a lock in place to prevent movement of the lever adds another level of complexity that can itself fail. This is well known and has been extensively studied (a classic paper is No good deed goes unpunished: Case studies of incidents and potential incidents caused by protective systems [0]).
Listen, for example, to this episode of “Undercover Economist” Tim Hartford’s Cautionary Tales [1] (though the example given might itself be problematic [2]).
Airplanes are extraordinarily safe already (look at the amazingly low accident rate, given those fallible, sometimes even negligent and incompetent people that fly them).
Contrary to your facile assertion “There is lots of room for improvement”, there are very few obvious improvements. Change something and you might prevent one accident but enable another one.
As an example: terrorists enter the cockpit. Easy, obvious: lock the door! Ok. Suicidal pilot locks out the other pilot and flies into a mountain. Easy, obvious: unlock the door. GOTO 10. It’s not obvious. These are hard problems that many competent people have thought about in depth. That’s why “everyone” is so “intent on defending the status-quo”.
In other areas, there might be “obvious improvements”, eg regulatory matters, but even there it’s not easy. Aviation is operating within an international framework, there are rules and international treaties and regulatory bodies and stakeholders and so on.
But my main point is that it’s absurd to accuse Airbus of overlooking an obvious improvement without even a cursory understanding of the matter.
[0] https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/prs.68...
[1] https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-3-lala-la...
[2] https://leancrew.com/all-this/2019/11/galileo-and-failure/
Who made such an accusation? The only way you can assume that's my assertion is if you think the UI of an airplane is literally perfect already. If there is room for improvement, which obviously there is, it's not necessarily because anyone was negligent, it's because we're constantly learning and improving.
I find all of your arguments unconvincing and tied to the status quo rather than acknowledging that improvement is possible sometimes even in obvious ways given new information.
Just because there is the potential for poorly thought out improvements, does not mean that every suggested improvement adds a prohibitive level of complexity. You've failed to demonstrate that such a prohibitive level of complexity would be added with my suggested improvement... you've simply asserted it.
On top of everything, you've not provided any credentials showing you know any more about the situation than I do, yet you seem every bit as confident.
Why do I say this? Well then the pilot has autonomy, if the overspeed warning is an error, or you have a problem reducing speed you can still attempt to fly the aircraft?
I mean sure, there'll be a speed at which gear extension just causes a crash, but there's also presumably mid-ground.??
Edit: total armchair aero engineering it; also in this case it might just have caused a problem at greater altitude ... but then at least there's time to correct things.
It may be better to go to full automation then to start having various controls be locked (with the issues around those added mechanisms).
There are already LOTS of situation on airbus in particular where the plane simply will not do what you tell it. Overall this has saved a lot of lives (envelope protection etc).
You CAN almost always override / remove the safety envelope (pull breakers to get to direct law etc) but why. These plans can now be flown by relatively junior pilots (or in this case by folks with potentially fake pilot licenses).