re: Plane Crash in France - 148 on board

I'm not a pilot and I don't know the history of the 320's "unsafe" autopilot system, but they don't have the market cornered on autopilot related accidents. That 777 crash at SFO a year or two ago was pilot error, but involved the autopilot system. On final approach, the crew had the autopilot partially engaged or in the wrong mode or something. The plane sank below the glide path and was almost in the bay before one of the pilots realized how low they were. They tried to abort and got the nose up a little, but still hit the seawall at the end of the runway.

I'd be interested to hear what 777Tiger has to say about your 320 autopilot complaint. I wouldn't get on an MD-80 for years after the Alaska Air screw jack crash in CA, so I don't blame you for avoiding 320s if you feel you have reason to.

Thoughts and prayers. Terrible stuff.

There's a shitload of 320s out there, so something is bound to happen to some of them. Per a Boeing study, they have 0.14 fatalities per million flight hours. Apparently, this is a good number.

Obviously a terrorist attack. Hopefully Germany invades some place and conducts a holocaust on the Muslims.

They may have had hypoxia before they realized something was wrong.

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They may have had hypoxia before they realized something was wrong.

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Highly unlikely in a commercial jet with all the safeguards in place.....but I guess it's possible. I suspect that something like that happened to the missing Malaysian jet.

Maybe not comfort for those involved - But finding the black box and perhaps preventing a similar situation in the future gives me a little comfort.

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Nothing like reading this breaking story while in flight. A little unnerving for me right now.

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Happens in threes.

Lots of erroneous information here and being distributed by the media. Not unexpected these days.

The Airbus has a good safety record, especially the A320/19/18 series. There is no problem with the autopilot although I could understand how certain aspects of it could be confusing. The autopilot controls all or nothing. The pilot cannot decide which flight surfaces he or she wants the autopilot to control. Perhaps in the Russian accident the author meant the computer that controls the ailerons was turned off. Big difference.
With that said, the autopilot can be completely disengaged and the Airbus can be flown just like non fly-by-wire aircraft using stick and rudder. (Side stick in Airbus' case!)
In fact, it is recommended by many operators that their flight crews turn off all of the "gee-whiz" stuff on occasion to get a feel for and practice flying the aircraft without automation. At least my company recommends that.

With that said, the Airbus is fly-by-wire and uses 5 different flight control computers which utilize electrical and hydraulic power to move flight surfaces. The only flight control surface with a mechanical linkage to the cockpit is the trimmable horizontal stabilizer(THS). As one would suspect, the computers have many reduncies as do all of the other systems. Total system failures are for the most part unheard of.

We need to give it a few days, maybe weeks or months to see what the investigators find before jumping to conclusions. Again, hard to do in this day of being able to "Google the answer" and get instant gratification, but there's usually a chain of events that occur during plane crashes and it takes careful investigation of the clues to discover the cause.
Oh, and 24 years isn't old for an airplane.
Boeing and Airbus driver