while the co-pilots behaviour of pulling on the stick for minutes, and not recognizing the very simple stall-recovery process of pushing & gaining speed is, well, astonishing - there is a reason for his behaviour.

the reason is that such planes usually encounter stall-warnings on approach, when in a landing configuration, close to ground, and having a lot of excess power. in such occasions, the usual procedure is not to lower the nose & convert altitude to speed, but to simply 'power yourself out' of the stall situation - apply a lot of (available excess) power, and your speed will pick up, and you're not close to stalling anymore.

the fact that the co-pilot in question referred to TOGA (the Take-Off-Go-Around procedure) in the transcript, and the fact that they were using maximum thrust for most of the falling time also suggest that his idea of stall recovery was to power himself out of the stall.

this is quite unfortunate indeed, as any small-plane pilots instinct would have been simply to dip the plane's nose & recover easily.

the thing with the Airbus control system is that you issue 'change' commands to the plane. you issue a 'roll command' when you push the stick to the side, and you issue a 'G command' when you push it forward or back. the plane will remain in the new commanded state until commanded otherwise.

(now read the last sentence again, and chew on it, make sure you understand it thoroughly)

thus, the usual way to fly the plane is to issue small, well-intentioned commands, not to pull on a stick for minutes, as one of the pilots here did. and the plane will stay in the new situation. 'will stay' means that it will issue corrections on its own to maintain the commanded attitude. for example, after having been issued a roll command for a few degrees, the plane will stay in that attitude even of there are disturbing factors - say, turbulence. (as a result, in such a case it is an error for a pilot to try to manually compensate for turbulence-induced attitude changes, as the plane does it on its own anyway, and he will end up over-compensating)

all-in-all, this is a big change in the philosophy on how to fly a plane, even when flying alone, when compared to a 'legacy' system of direct physical coupling of control instruments to control surfaces.

as for simultaneous inputs: actually, one of the pilots can 'take over' command of the plane, and shut out the other one, if he so chooses. none of the pilots did this on this occasion. when having multiple inputs, the plane does signal that the other person is entering inputs as well (at least visually, maybe there is also an aural indication). although, as pointed out, there is no physical feedback on the stick that would signal the other pilots inputs. when both are entering commands, their commands are 'added together'. thus a full pull & a full push on the stick will cancel each other out. two 'small' pushes will results a 'big' push. this makes sense, so that either pilot can 'adjust' the planes behaviour in addition to what is already happening.

the point of not having physical feedback is to reduce strain on the pilots. this way, the stick is always centered, and when moving off center, the pilot knows he's issuing commands to the plane. if it was not so, the pilot wouldn't be sure in which state of the stick is it in a 'neutral' position.

I hope the above gives some background to the story.

and, the most bizarre thing of all: you fly a private plane, there are no security checks whatsoever. and you can take off from the *very same airport* too!

you don't have to own a plane to do this, just rent one.

it's more expensive than just buying a flight ticket, and private planes are smaller too - but if you're a person valuing comfort, it's not unreasonable.

or if you want to fly a plane full of explosives into a building, you can still cause a lot of damage... oh, and you don't have to hijack it, as you're already in the pilot seat to begin with...

I guess there is a missing option there:

I don't live in the United Police State of America

yes, Prey to the rescue, install it via LogMeIn, and then mark your computer as 'lost' - Prey will report the location of the laptop and make pictures with the camera.

of course, Prey installation is done via the GUI, so you have to pick a time when the thief is not using the laptop, but has it on...

indeed, congrats from neighbouring Hungary! :)

indeed, it's a company from Slovenia, see here: http://www.pipistrel.si/news/pipistrel-won-the-nasa-green-flight-challenge-for-the-third-

have been winning this challenge for 3 years on a row now...

congrats indeed, from neighbouring Hungary :)

funnily enough, the winner is a European company, called Pipistrel, see here: http://www.pipistrel.si/news/pipistrel-won-the-nasa-green-flight-challenge-for-the-third-

they have been winning this award for 3 years in a row...

funny how they seem to hide the fact that the winner is a small glider company from Slovenia, EU, called Pipistrel, see here: http://www.pipistrel.si/news/pipistrel-won-the-nasa-green-flight-challenge-for-the-third-

and they have been winning this challenge for 3 years in a row now!

http://www.geeked.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Burning_Man_BRD_NV_GE1_1SEP2011.jpg

they should just get rid of most of the screening, for everyone, not pilots. the current 'screening' is not more than a 'security theater', giving a (false) impression of security. it is invading, mostly harassment, unnecessary and totally pointless.

without such stupid and pointless procedures, the whole flying experience would be pleasant - again. with the same amount of 'security' as you have now.

and would be a whole lot cheaper too.

how is creating a web site for a particular browser considered as 'taking over' that particular browser?

and how is this related to the security of any OS?

(and how would iOS be a most secure OS among all OSs around? like, seriously? and how would this statement be relevant anyway?)

wow, how is JavaScript on the server side new?

anyone remember the Netscape FastTrack server, and the LiveWire environment, where LiveScript was used to code both server & client side of a web application. LiveScript being of course the original name of JavaScript. this was back in 1996, merely 15 years ago...

history seems to repeat itself...

with all the complaining in the article - is there a viable solution suggested? like, "let them pass, even if they don't know enough" doesn't sound like an idea that would solve anything...