Originally posted by Evan
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Even in an Airbus, with it's advanced FBW and very high systems integration, there is a clear distinction between the flight controls behavior and the autoflight system.
The control law is independent of who is flying the plane, whether it's the PIC, the FO or R2D2.
And the envelope protections, if the conditions are met, will kick in regardless of who is flying the plane. While it is harder to imagine how the envelope protection may be needed when in autoflight, it can happen due to system failures, weather and even other reasons like the pilots telling the autoflight to do something that the envelope protections would rather avoid (maybe this would not happen in the middle of a UAS event, but I am talking of the general concept here).
You cannot tie the reversion of control laws to whether the AP and AT are both engaged or not.
So if the flight control transfer function being enforced is the same than in normal law but you have degraded envelope protections, then you are in effect in alternate law. And I didn't mention the status of the autoflight in this sentence.
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