AF flight 447

It is always devastating to hear of the loss of an airliner. As a private pilot, I am also very interested to know the exact reasons why. The Discovery or Nat Geo channel has many shows that gives airline accident causes post the event and I always try to watch those shows. In this case, it was a A330 (newer, heavy passenger jet) that last reported some equipment failures and electrical losses. As with all newer aircraft, Airbus makes a quality airplane with many redundancies, but it is a glass cockpit. If this aircraft lost all electrical, it would be very difficult for the pilots to deal with that for a prolonged period. The aircraft systems depend on inputs and these inputs are driven by electrical sources. It wasn't well know that an A330 took a 1000ft nose dive, in recent months, for no apparent reason and then recovered. It was later discovered that the computers were reacting to bad input data. (you know the adage, good info in, good info out and visa versa). I was on a TAP Air Portugal flight from Lisbon to Newark on May 10 and, in our descent over NY, we hit strong buffeting winds. The aircraft rolled, pitched and the tail sank and rattled. All of this while we were in a turn lining up for landing. All the girls around me, about 4 of them, were clutching and using the air sick bags. The cabin erupted in screams and the planed seemed out of control. I knew that it could handle stresses many many times worse than this but it does always cross my mind; are the computers flying, are the pilots, how ready are the pilots to react to something catastrophic.
No pilot boards an aircraft expecting to fail at his or her job of safety and we, the passengers, depend on manufacturers, pilots, airline management, safety personnel and a host of activities that are meant to keep checks and balances in place and keep us safe.
We should all be attentive to know what were the catastrophic failures that lead to the loss of AF447 and do what is necessary to avoid them in future flight. Learning from terrible lessons thios way is what has lead us to the air safety we have today.