Abnormal Attitude Law

Every other rung of the degradation ladder — Alternate, Direct, Mechanical Back-Up — is failure-driven: a computer trips, a hydraulic system bleeds down, the air-data sources disagree, and the computers step the law down because they can no longer trust an input. The abnormal attitude law is the one exception in the whole chapter. It does not ask what failed. It asks where the aircraft is pointing. With every system perfectly healthy and the aircraft in full Normal Law, if turbulence, a wake, an autopilot runaway, or a mishandled recovery throws the aircraft far enough out of the envelope, the same law engages — and once you have touched it, you do not get Normal Law back for the rest of the flight.

This article builds directly on Alternate Law and Direct Law: the three-axis configuration the abnormal attitude law gives you is assembled out of pitch alternate, roll direct, and yaw laws defined there. Read those two first.

Two warnings up front, because both are the exam traps on this law:

[!warning]- The abnormal attitude law is attitude-driven, not failure-driven. It can engage from a perfectly healthy Normal-Law aircraft.

Every instinct trained on Alternate and Direct says "a law downgrade means something broke." This one breaks that rule. Per FCOM, it engages if for any reason the aircraft reaches an extreme attitude — wake turbulence, a severe upset, an autopilot fault, a botched manual recovery. No computer, sensor, or hydraulic failure is required. Carry "law downgrade ⇒ system failure" into this article and you will mis-diagnose the very situation it exists for. The trigger is a number on the attitude, speed, AoA, or Mach — nothing else.

[!warning]- After you recover, the law does not return to Normal. It latches into Alternate for the remainder of the flight.

Pull the aircraft back inside the envelope and the abnormal attitude law disengages — but it hands you Alternate Law (pitch alternate + roll direct + yaw alternate), not Normal Law, and that configuration remains for the remainder of the flight. There is no automatic path back to Normal. Having been thrown that far out of the envelope, the fly-by-wire system will not assume everything is trustworthy again; it flies the rest of the leg conservatively. Expect to land in Alternate Law.

1. Attitude-driven, not failure-driven — the whole point

FCOM defines the law in two sentences, and the first three words carry the design intent. Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-40:

If for any reason the aircraft goes far outside the normal flight envelope and reaches an extreme attitude, the flight control law will be modified. The abnormal attitude law will engage and will provide the PF with maximum efficiency to recover normal attitude.

Three phrases are load-bearing:

• "for any reason" — the trigger is indifferent to cause. Wake, autopilot runaway, an unrecovered stall, severe turbulence, mishandling: the law does not care how the aircraft got to an extreme attitude, only that it is there. This is exactly what separates it from Alternate/Direct, which require an identified system failure.
• "far outside the normal flight envelope" — note far. Normal Law's protections (the alpha and bank-angle soft walls of Pitch Attitude and Load Factor and Lateral Law) catch you at the envelope edge. Reaching the abnormal attitude trigger means the aircraft is already well past everything those protections defend — either they were degraded away by an earlier failure, or an external force flung the aircraft straight through them.
• "maximum efficiency to recover normal attitude" — the single design goal, and the reason the three axes are configured the way they are (§3). At an extreme attitude the pilot needs the most direct, highest-authority, least-processed control available, not a law still trying to police a flight envelope. So roll drops to direct (full stick, fast roll), yaw drops to the most basic mode, and pitch keeps a load-factor law with the protections stripped.

A useful mental model: the abnormal attitude law is the aircraft's "safe mode plus forced restart." The display has garbled (extreme attitude), so the operating system stops loading the elaborate drivers (envelope protection) and gives you the lowest-level, most reliable basic controls to get the machine running again (recovery). Having recovered, it does not jump straight back to full health — it keeps running in safe mode (Alternate) until the next shutdown (landing).

2. The trigger thresholds — six red lines

The law engages on any one of a short list of attitude, speed, AoA, and Mach limits. Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-40:

The abnormal attitude law engages when one of the following values is reached: ‐ If at least 2 ADCs are valid and consistent: Pitch attitude above 50 ° nose up or below 30 ° nose down. If not: Pitch attitude above 40 ° nose up or below 20 ° nose down ‐ Bank angle is above 125 ° ‐ Angle of attack is above 40 ° ‐ Speed is above 440 kt or below 60 kt ‐ Mach is above 0.96 or below 0.1.

What every one of these numbers has in common is that it sits far beyond daily flying and beyond almost every conventional abnormal. A full career on type, normal operations plus the great majority of non-normals, will never touch any of them. Reaching one means the aircraft really has been thrown into an extreme corner outside the envelope — the quantified version of FCOM's far outside.

[!warning]- When the air data is less trustworthy, the pitch trigger tightens (50°/−30° → 40°/−20°), making the law engage sooner — the opposite of the intuitive "relax the threshold to avoid nuisance triggers."

Intuition says that with fewer valid ADCs you should widen the threshold to avoid false engagement. FCOM does the reverse. With fewer than two valid, consistent ADCs, the pitch trigger tightens from 50°/−30° to 40°/−20°. The reason: speed, Mach, and AoA all depend on air data, so once the ADCs are unreliable, those four red lines are effectively gone and only the inertially-derived attitude angles (pitch and bank) remain trustworthy. The system compensates by making the one surviving pitch gate more sensitive — it would rather catch you a little earlier than wait, blind on airspeed, for an even more extreme attitude. The tighter threshold buys back, with earlier attitude-based engagement, the early warning that the lost air data used to provide. It is sensor degradation driving an adaptive change in the logic — a classic trap.

3. While the law is active — the three-axis configuration

For the period the aircraft is at an extreme attitude and you are recovering, the three axes are configured as follows. Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-40:

When the abnormal attitude law engages: ‐ The pitch alternate law is active ‐ The roll direct law is active ‐ The yaw mechanical law is active ‐ Autotrim is not available. Therefore, USE MAN PITCH TRIM is displayed on the PFDs, and ‐ F/CTL ALTN LAW is displayed on the ECAM.

Axis by axis, with the why behind each choice:

• Pitch = alternate law. The stick still commands load factor (the family described in Alternate Law), but the pitch-attitude, AoA, and high-speed protections are gone. That is exactly what a recovery needs — at an extreme attitude you must be able to push the nose hard down or pull it up, and a protection would only get in the way.
• Autotrim cut → USE MAN PITCH TRIM. This is the most important and most overlooked feature of the active phase. Autotrim normally lets the THS slowly absorb a sustained pitch demand. In a rapidly changing extreme attitude, letting the stabiliser chase a transient stick input could drive it to a position that, after recovery, leaves a large standing trim needing a heavy reversal — or that aggravates the upset. So the system freezes autotrim and hands the THS back to the pilot (manual trim), to be moved deliberately and sparingly. The FCTM's own recovery guidance reflects the same restraint: nose-down trim is used only in incremental inputs when elevator authority runs short (§6).
• Roll = direct law. Stick to aileron/spoiler, directly and proportionally — fast, high roll rate (Direct Law). Recovery from an extreme attitude routinely means rolling the wings back toward level to let the nose fall to the horizon, and direct law gives the most immediate roll authority for that.
• Yaw = mechanical law. This is the one term that needs disambiguating. A330 yaw is rudder-by-wire — there is no cable (see Rudder and Yaw and the chapter's architecture). FCOM's yaw mechanical law is therefore not a statement that a cable run takes over; it is FCOM's name for the most basic yaw mode — pedal demand passed to the rudder in the plainest way, with no Dutch-roll damping and no automatic turn coordination. (The precise internal mechanism of "yaw mechanical law" is not defined in this FCOM section; its exact meaning is reconciled with the maintenance description in §5 and deferred to Mechanical Back-up and BCM. Treat it operationally as "the most basic yaw mode," not as a cable channel.) The practical point for the pilot: in the active phase nothing is damping or coordinating yaw for you, so the pedals demand even more restraint than usual — the inverse of Normal Law, where rolling automatically coordinates the rudder and the pedals stay still.
• ECAM = F/CTL ALTN LAW. There is no dedicated "ABNORMAL ATTITUDE" message. The ECAM simply reads F/CTL ALTN LAW — in the cockpit's language, "you are in Alternate."

4. After recovery — the one-way trapdoor

This is the most important, most-tested, and most counter-intuitive part of the law. Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-40:

When the aircraft returns within the normal flight envelope, the abnormal attitude law disengages and the following conditions remains for the remainder of the flight: ‐ The pitch alternate law is active with autotrim ‐ The roll direct law is active ‐ The yaw alternate law is active ‐ F/CTL ALTN LAW is displayed on the ECAM.

Three things to nail down:

First — it is latched. Remains for the remainder of the flight. Recover the aircraft and the law does not restore Normal. The rest of the leg is flown in Alternate (pitch alternate + roll direct + yaw alternate, which is the handling of ALT 2). The rationale is conservative: anything that could throw the aircraft so far out of the envelope often comes with uncertainty about sensor consistency, inertial reference, or even the airframe, and the fly-by-wire system will not assume "everything is fine again" and re-arm the full protection suite. Latching into Alternate is the design saying, in effect, "after an event that large, I will fly the rest of the way in a more conservative, more transparent law" — the same safe comes first philosophy that runs through the whole chapter.

Second — from active to latched, two axes upgrade and one is unchanged:

Pitch autotrim is restored once the attitude is no longer changing violently — the "trim stuck in the wrong place" risk is gone, so the THS is allowed to self-trim again and the USE MAN PITCH TRIM cue clears. Yaw is upgraded from mechanical back to alternate, recovering Dutch-roll damping and (in CONF ≠ 0) turn coordination, as defined for Alternate Law's yaw alternate law. Roll stays direct throughout.

Third — the ECAM line never changes. From the moment you cross a trigger, through the recovery, into the latched state, the pilot's law annunciation reads the same: F/CTL ALTN LAW. This is deliberate. A recovery is already a high-workload, high-adrenaline task; the system does not want your attention pulled away by a law name flickering between states. You only need to know "I am in Alternate," fly the aircraft back, then complete the leg under Alternate-Law handling and limits.

The whole life cycle is a one-way trapdoor:

  ANY CURRENT LAW  (typically NORMAL — systems may be fully healthy)
  aircraft inside the normal flight envelope
        │
        │  attitude / speed / AoA / Mach crosses a trigger red line
        ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │  ABNORMAL ATTITUDE LAW — ACTIVE (recovery phase)              │
 │    PITCH : alternate law, NO autotrim → USE MAN PITCH TRIM    │
 │    ROLL  : direct law (stick → surface, proportional)        │
 │    YAW   : mechanical law (no coordination, no damping)      │
 │    ECAM  : F/CTL ALTN LAW                                     │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
        │
        │  aircraft returns inside the normal flight envelope
        ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │  LATCHED — remains for the remainder of the flight           │
 │    PITCH : alternate law, autotrim RESTORED                  │
 │    ROLL  : direct law (unchanged)                            │
 │    YAW   : alternate law (damping / coordination restored)   │
 │    ECAM  : F/CTL ALTN LAW   (same line — never changes)      │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
        │
        └──►  no path back to NORMAL LAW for the rest of the flight

5. The maintenance view — "will never hinder aircraft recovery"

A common misconception is that laws live only in the FCOM and the AMM says nothing. Not here. The AMM's EFCS Description and Operation carries a dedicated paragraph for this law, and it states the design philosophy from the engineering side in one line worth memorising. Per AMM 27-90-00:

(c) Abnormal attitude law This FCPC law is engaged when certain aircraft parameters exceed pre-determined values. This law ensures that the flight control law will never hinder aircraft recovery. The laws available are: - in roll: the yaw alternate law, - in pitch: an adapted Nz law, without autotrim. After aircraft recovery, and until landing, the laws available become: - in roll: the yaw alternate law, - in pitch: the Nz law (with recovered autotrim).

Two riches for the pilot here:

The design intent, stated from the machine side. Will never hinder aircraft recovery — that single clause is the thread running through this whole article. FCOM's pilot-facing maximum efficiency to recover normal attitude and the AMM's engineering-facing will never hinder aircraft recovery describe the same thing from two directions: at an extreme attitude the law strips back to the most basic configuration whose only job is to get out of the pilot's way.

A teachable cross-source naming difference — not a contradiction, just two manuals describing the same behaviour in their own vocabularies:

Read two things off it. (a) The pitch column is consistent — the A330's "pitch alternate law" simply is a load-factor (Nz) law with protections removed, which the AMM calls an adapted Nz law; same thing, different label. (b) The AMM packages roll + yaw under the single name yaw alternate law (that law already contains a direct roll term plus a damped yaw term — see the summation below), whereas FCOM, in the active phase, breaks the yaw out as yaw mechanical to emphasise that damping and coordination are at their weakest right then. The pilot's mental model should follow the FCOM pilot side (active phase: fly the yaw as "no damping, no coordination, pedals restrained"); the AMM's yaw alternate law name is the implementation view, telling you the machine runs the same software branch across both phases. (That FCOM-versus-AMM reconciliation is integrative reasoning across the two manuals, not a quote from either.)

The AMM also confirms, on the configuration side, that the trigger is part of the EFCS configuration logic and lives in the primary computers. Per AMM 27-90-00:

In abnormal conditions: When some aircraft parameters exceed the pre-determined values, the "abnormal attitude laws" are engaged.

This meshes exactly with FCOM: FCOM supplies which pre-determined values (the six red lines of §2); the AMM confirms "parameters exceed pre-determined values ⇒ engage" as a standing part of the configuration logic. And it defines the sub-law the system switches into — the yaw alternate law — as a summation in the FCPC/FCSC, with FCSC1 holding Dutch-roll damping if all three primary computers are lost. Per AMM 27-90-00:

2 Yaw alternate law This FCPC and FCSC law is engaged if the lateral normal law is lost. Its characteristics are: - The roll control is direct, an order on the side stick directly commands a deflection, according to a kinematic calculation. - The yaw control is achieved by the summation of two terms: . pedal orders . Dutch roll damping orders (from yaw rate) ... If the three FCPCs are lost, the FCSC1 ensures Dutch roll damping, using yaw rate data from the rate gyro unit.

The takeaway: the abnormal attitude law is not a separate emergency computer. It is one branch of the everyday logic inside the primary flight control computers (PRIM/FCPC), running on the same sensors and servos, with the control law swapped for a recovery-optimised configuration. It needs no extra hardware to be healthy — as long as a PRIM is computing and an attitude crosses a line, the law is there.

6. Upset prevention and recovery — the pilot's side

The abnormal attitude law is the machine's automatic half; the crew's half is the FCTM's Upset Prevention and Recovery. The two are one coin: the law hands you the configuration best suited to recovery, and the technique tells you how to use it. Note the FCTM's emphasis — prevention comes before recovery. The first line of defence is keeping the aircraft out of an extreme attitude at all; by the time you are recovering, you are already on the back foot.

The FCTM's definition of an upset is much broader — and triggers much earlier — than the six numerical red lines. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

An aircraft upset is an undesired aircraft state characterized by unintentional divergences from parameters normally experienced during operations. An aircraft upset may involve pitch and/or bank angle divergences and may lead to inappropriate airspeeds for the conditions. An upset condition exists any time an aircraft diverges from what the flight crew is intending to do.

The contrast matters: the FCTM's upset (any unintended divergence) begins well before the abnormal attitude law's thresholds. The pilot's "upset" starts long before the machine engages its law. By the time bank exceeds 125° and the law switches, you are in the tail end of an upset that was not arrested in time. That is the value of prevention — catch the divergence while it is small. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC, prevention rests on monitoring:

The prevention of an upset situation is possible thanks to an effective monitoring of: ‐ The environment (turbulences, icing conditions, weather) ‐ The aircraft energy state ‐ The aircraft flight path ‐ The aircraft technical state (Flight controls laws, systems failure).

The list names flight control laws and systems failure explicitly — directly relevant here. Once you are already in Alternate or Direct (protections reduced), monitoring energy and flight path becomes more important, not less: the soft walls are gone, so the aircraft is easier to push to an extreme.

If recovery is needed, the FCTM compresses it to three activities. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

An overview of actions to take to recover from an upset would gather three basic activities: ‐ Assess the energy (become situationally aware) ‐ Stop the flight path divergence ‐ Recover to a stabilized flight path. The Nose high/Nose low techniques represent a logical progression for recovering the aircraft. They are not necessarily procedural.

Recognition and crew coordination come first. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

At the first indication of a flight path divergence, the first pilot who observes the divergence must announce it with the callout "NOSE HIGH" or "NOSE LOW", depending on the situation. The flight crew must use the flight instruments as primary means to analyze the upset situation.

Nose-high recovery. The FCTM's actions centre on getting a nose-down rate, managing thrust, and using bank only as a last resort within 60°. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

The flight crew must apply as much nose down pitch order as required to obtain a nose down pitch rate. In the case of lack of pitch down authority, the flight crew may use incremental inputs on the trim (nose down) to improve the effectiveness of the elevator control.

and on thrust and bank:

Select up to maximum thrust available while ensuring adequate pitch control. Increasing thrust may reduce the effectiveness of nose-down pitch control. It may be necessary to limit or reduce thrust to the point where control of the pitch is achieved.

The bank angle must not exceed 60 °. If all normal pitch control techniques are unsuccessful, the flight crew can keep the current bank angle or bank the aircraft to enable the nose to drop toward the horizon.

Two points connect straight back to the law. The trim guidance — incremental inputs on the trim — is the crew-side expression of the same restraint that made the law freeze autotrim in §3: trim sparingly, never in one large slug. And nose-high thrust is counter-intuitive: more thrust can reduce nose-down authority, so the technique may call for reducing thrust to regain pitch control.

Nose-low recovery. Here the priority is to roll the wings level and control the speed, because altitude is converting fast into airspeed. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

In general, a nose low with high-angle-of-bank requires prompt action, because the decreasing altitude is rapidly being exchanged for an increasing airspeed. It may be necessary to reduce the g-loading to improve roll effectiveness.

and:

The flight crew should reduce the thrust and/or use the speedbrakes to control the speed.

Both techniques end the same way — and the warning is symmetrical. Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC:

Recover the level flight at a sufficient airspeed while avoiding a stall due to premature recovery at low speed, or excessive g-loading at high speed.

And one note for whichever attitude the aircraft is in: an upset can be a stall in disguise. The FCTM is explicit that even in a nose low situation, the aircraft may be stalled and it would be necessary to recover from a stall first — so if a stall warning is present, apply the stall recovery before continuing the upset recovery.

After recovery, you fly the rest of the leg in Alternate Law. Remember the latched configuration of §4 and Alternate-Law handling: per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-10 the ECAM shows FLT CTL ALTN LAW (PROT LOST) with MAX SPEED 330 kt/M 0.82 for the A330, roll is direct (no bank protection, handle gently), and at low speed there is no alpha protection — only the stall warning and the barber pole. Land in Alternate, reverting to Flare law at 100 ft, and fly a careful non-normal approach.

[!warning]- An extreme attitude is not an invitation to use the rudder. The yaw axis is in its most basic mode and the rudder has no protection.

In the active phase yaw is the most basic mode — no Dutch-roll damping, no turn coordination — and the rudder, as on any conventional aircraft, has no envelope protection at all (Flight Control Fundamentals). Large, rapid, or reversing pedal inputs in this state can put very high loads on the fin. Every FCTM upset technique makes roll (ailerons and spoilers) the primary means of getting the wings and nose back, never the rudder (QRH Jam and Loss of Control).

Self-test

[!note]- Q1. How does the abnormal attitude law's trigger differ fundamentally from Alternate or Direct Law, and which six parameters invoke it?

Alternate and Direct are failure-driven — they require an identified system failure (an ADR loss, a hydraulic loss, cascading PRIM faults). The abnormal attitude law is attitude-driven: per FCOM it engages for any reason the aircraft reaches an extreme attitude, even with every system healthy and the aircraft in Normal Law. The six red lines (any one engages it): pitch > 50° nose up / < 30° nose down (with ≥ 2 ADCs valid and consistent; otherwise tightened to 40°/20°), bank > 125°, AoA > 40°, speed > 440 kt or < 60 kt, Mach > 0.96 or < 0.1.

[!note]- Q2. Why does the pitch trigger tighten (50°/−30° → 40°/−20°) when fewer ADCs are valid, rather than relax?

Because speed, Mach, and AoA all depend on air data, so with fewer than two valid, consistent ADCs those four red lines are effectively gone and only the inertially-derived pitch and bank angles remain trustworthy. The logic compensates by making the surviving pitch gate more sensitive — engaging a little earlier rather than waiting, blind on airspeed, for a more extreme attitude. The tighter threshold uses earlier attitude-based engagement to buy back the early warning the failed air data used to give. It is sensor degradation driving an adaptive change in the logic.

[!note]- Q3. While the law is active, what is each axis, and why is autotrim cut?

Active phase: pitch = alternate law with no autotrim (so USE MAN PITCH TRIM shows on the PFD), roll = direct law, yaw = mechanical law; ECAM shows F/CTL ALTN LAW. Autotrim is cut because it would let the THS slowly chase a transient pitch demand during a violently changing attitude, possibly driving the stabiliser to a position that, after recovery, needs a heavy reversal — or that aggravates the upset. Freezing autotrim hands the THS to the pilot for deliberate, sparing manual trim. The FCTM mirrors this: nose-down trim only in incremental inputs.

[!note]- Q4. After recovery, does the law return to Normal? Where does each axis end up?

No — it does not return to Normal. Per FCOM the state remains for the remainder of the flight: pitch alternate (autotrim restored), roll direct (unchanged), yaw alternate (Dutch-roll damping and, in CONF ≠ 0, turn coordination restored) — the handling of ALT 2. The system latches into Alternate because an event large enough to throw the aircraft that far out of the envelope leaves uncertainty about sensors, inertial reference, or the airframe, so the fly-by-wire will not re-arm full protection; it flies the rest of the leg conservatively.

[!note]- Q5. From engagement through recovery, what does the pilot see on the ECAM and PFD?

The ECAM reads the same F/CTL ALTN LAW throughout — from crossing a trigger, through recovery, into the latched state, it never flickers. There is no dedicated "ABNORMAL ATTITUDE" message. On the PFD, the active phase shows amber USE MAN PITCH TRIM (autotrim unavailable); once back inside the envelope, autotrim is restored and that cue clears. In short the cockpit language is "you are in Alternate," start to finish, by design — so a law name does not distract from the recovery.

[!note]- Q6. The FCTM says yaw is the most basic mode and the rudder has no protection. What does that mean for technique during recovery?

In the active phase yaw is mechanical law — no Dutch-roll damping, no turn coordination — and the rudder, as on any conventional aircraft, has no envelope protection. Large, rapid, or reversing pedal inputs can overstress the fin. Every FCTM upset technique therefore makes roll (ailerons and spoilers) the primary means of bringing the wings and nose back, never the rudder. Recovery is flown with deliberate roll and restrained pedals.

Key takeaways

The abnormal attitude law is the chapter's odd one out: it ignores what failed and reads only where the aircraft is pointing, drops to the most basic controls to get you out of the corner, and then quietly keeps you in Alternate all the way to the gate — a deliberately one-way door.

References

Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-40 (Abnormal Attitude Laws — definition and design intent "maximum efficiency to recover normal attitude"; the six trigger thresholds incl. the ADC-dependent pitch tightening; active-phase three-axis configuration pitch alternate/no autotrim · roll direct · yaw mechanical, USE MAN PITCH TRIM, ECAM F/CTL ALTN LAW; post-recovery latched configuration pitch alternate-with-autotrim · roll direct · yaw alternate, remains for the remainder of the flight). Per FCOM DSC-27-20-20-10 (ECAM FLT CTL ALTN LAW (PROT LOST) / MAX SPEED 330 kt/M 0.82 for the latched Alternate phase). Per AMM 27-90-00 (EFCS Description and Operation — dedicated (c) Abnormal attitude law paragraph: will never hinder aircraft recovery, adapted Nz law without autotrim and recovered autotrim after recovery; In abnormal conditions configuration confirmation that parameters exceeding pre-determined values engage the law; yaw alternate law defined as the summation of pedal orders and Dutch-roll-damping orders, with FCSC1 holding damping via the rate gyro unit if all three FCPCs are lost). Per FCTM PR-AEP-MISC (Upset Prevention and Recovery — definition of upset; prevention monitoring; three basic recovery activities; NOSE HIGH/NOSE LOW callout; Nose High and Nose Low actions incl. incremental nose-down trim, thrust management, bank ≤ 60°, g-loading and speed control, recover at a sufficient airspeed). The "safe mode / forced restart" analogy, the rationale for freezing autotrim (anti-aggravation), the rationale for latching into Alternate (sensor/airframe uncertainty after a large excursion), and the FCOM-versus-AMM "yaw mechanical / yaw alternate" naming reconciliation are integrative synthesis built on the verbatim statements above, not standalone manual assertions. The precise internal mechanism of "yaw mechanical law" and the true Mechanical Back-Up are deferred to Mechanical Back-up and BCM and Rudder and Yaw; the full ECAM-to-law trigger mapping is in Law Degradation and Reconfiguration.

Independent study material, not an Airbus publication and not endorsed by the manufacturer. Always defer to the current operator FCOM, FCTM, and QRH for operational use.