The current generation of large commercial jetliners barely need a pilot, other than to reassure the passengers. The savings in fuel costs of the latest generation of planes are because most of the decision making is taken out of the hands of the pilot. the plane decides based on the route, amount of fuel on board, weight of the passengers and cargo, and the wind conditions, etc… how fast to climb, how much throttle to apply, etc… so the plane arrives at the destination right on time and with the minimum amount of fuel consumed.
The Airbus is a “fly by wire” aircraft – the controls in the cabin are nothing more than what a joystick and mouse do on your computer. They are just control inputs into the computers – they aren’t actually connected to anything. (your car probably has at least several controls that are also like that – your car doesn’t have a rod from the gas pedal to a carburetor – your “gas pedal” is just an input to the computer that controls the engine and the transmission.
So here is my crazy theory – the pilots were asleep – and the plane flew itself right into the thunderstorm. By the time the pilots realized they had a problem, it was too late to solve. The plane was 4 hours into its flight, cruising at 35,000 feet – it was beyond the range where ground radios would be pestering the pilots, and it was the middle of the night. The plane flies itself, and will even prevent pilots from taking actions that the computer decides are unsafe. Large thunderstorms in the middle of the night are a bit unusual. The stories of pilots falling asleep are more common over the Pacific Ocean where the flights are even longer and more boring.
If you have cruise control on your car, you’ve had a small dose of this. With a car with cruise control, you can become very inattentive to the journey… you snap out of it and think…. wow, I just drove for 2 hours, and I don’t remember a single thing that happened. Probably if some danger was apparent, you would have become more alert and reacted, but maybe not.
The unintended consequence of too much technology is you expect it to always work, and lose the ability to cope when the technology fails.
*** Update ***
My theory is looking really good at this point. This report mentions that Air France does have the final 4 minutes of flight data from the satellite link. The pilots took autopilot off the same minute that the plane started to break up. They let the plane fly itself right into a fatal thunderstorm without taking corrective action until the plane was already doomed.