Wow - interesting thread.

The black box data has been released and won't change, unless it is determined to be faulty (not likely).

Soooooo

My gut reaction (as a private pilot and airbus mechanic) is that the bad airspeed indication gave them the impression that the ENTIRE pitot/static system (or just the static) was unreliable (airspeed, altitude, rate of climb) but only the pitot system (airspeed) was. They may have remembered the 757 in South America that went down due to blocked static ports. This would explain why they didn't seem to react too adversely to the dropping altitude (125mph straight down, 107mph forward, with the nose up more than 15 degrees). But then, why react (either way, let alone backwards) to the stall warning?

The AoA and ball (attitude indicator) should have been used to keep nose pointed at the horizon at a reasonable speed while they pursued the pitot/static problem. My instrument instructor back in the '70s hammered home a fundamental instrument scan along with instrument cross checking - he was always throwing instrument failure(s) at me as well as discussing how to determine different failures (he was very old school). It just seems like if they had refly and a moment they would have easily gotten it right the second time.

For anyone who is nervous about Airbus fly-by-wire ... the 787 will be be a real eye-opener.

PS. these planes are hit ALL THE TIME by lightning - I helped work 28 individual lightning strikes on a 320 a while back, and we had another one with over 100. (Once we had a 757 lose a radome in flight due to lightning.)