[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by Nedusa

but surely Auto cockpit computer or not, the pilots and crew and passengers would have felt the plane descending and wondered why ?

So the Pilots would have disengaged this computer and flown the plane manually and they would have reported the fault straight away.

Apparently not according to experts. All this took around 8 minutes and it would only be the last few minutes when passengers noticed they were flying low. Because an air bus relies on a satellite navigation system, its doubtful they would of been looking out of the cockpit and may only of known about their decent when cabin crew came in to tell them; by then it may of been too late to take the plane back up manually.

This would also explain why there was no MD to ground control. MD only happens after everything has done to get a plane out of danger.