[MattG]

With over 13,000 hrs of flight time and over 4,000 in an airbus, this is one of the most outrageous events I have ever heard of in my profession. It makes me sad and angry to see such a terrible event unfold. Even the most basic airmanship could have prevented this event...not the planes fault, not Airbus' fault, just an extremely poor pilot doing everything wrong.

I have equal time in Boeing and Airbus, and I always compair them as Ford and Chevy. They both do the job equally as well, just with different approaches. I prefer Boeing and I prefer Chevy, because of senority, I fly an airbus (won't own a Ford..Ha)!

I can assure all of you that if you get on a mainline flight with any major airline in the U.S. that you will have highly experienced pilots that have earned the right year after year to get you where you need to go safely. The regionals are full of hightly competent grossly underpaind pilots that are safe as well. Sometimes a bad apple slips through the cracks, it happens in every profession, and unfortunately in aviation, it kills people as in this case.

Don't let this change how you feel about flying. Get on the plane, say thanks to the pilot when you get to your destination, and let's all go safely drive the crap out of our cars!

Matt

P.S. The laws designed in the airbus are to protect the state of the aircraft as much as possible. With a much more direct input while in Alternate Law(the first downgrade of flight controls), if both pilots were to get equal action on the controls, you could very easily over stress the aircraft and cause an even worse situation. Last but not least, there is a lockout that either pilot can use to completely take control of the aircraft and "Lockout" the other pilots ability to control the aircraft. The Airbus engineers are no dummies. In this case the pilots were 100% the cause of the accident.