[skgoa]

The copilot pulling the yoke back continued to do so, long after the other, much more experienced, copilot had formally assumed control and had attempted to bring the nose back down by pushing the yoke forward. Ultimately the inexperienced copilot fighting against his more experienced superior was what doomed the airplane. Both the senior copilot and the captain immediately identified the problem and attempted to take the correct action.

This is not a problem with how the system works, since this behaviour is explicitely communicated to pilots. It even says right on the instrument panel what control law the plane is in. There are only a handful of control laws and the differences aren't that complex. Anyone with sufficient experience in flying Airbus products knows this.

[maxwell_smart]

I don't know a whole lot about this, but I seem to remember that there was one design decision, that, while not wrong, was different from the generation before, and that is that the airplane yokes were not mechanically coupled to one another. If they were mechanically coupled, the experienced pilot could have felt the other pilot pulling back on the controls, but what was happening was that the two pilots were pulling the controls in different directions AND the plane was averaging the control inputs and giving no feedback to the pilots that what each was doing was wildly inconsistent or contradictory.

[foldr]

>The copilot pulling the yoke back continued to do so, long after the other, much more experienced, copilot had formally assumed control and had attempted to bring the nose back down by pushing the yoke forward.

At least according to the official accident report, neither of the pilots at the controls consistently made nose down stick inputs.