So his going to the bathroom caused the crash?
My luck is every time I try to go to the bathroom my phone rings. Maybe the pilot's luck was worse than mine is.
**IF** human error is the real cause, then it’s not just the left seat guy who was in error.
It’s easy to get complacent when you’re on autopilot and have experienced hundreds if not thousands of hours of prior trouble-free automated flight control, and those have encouraged you to be less than fully attentive and/or situationally aware.
The folks IN the cockpit likely had SECONDS to gain control of the aircraft after the autopilot said “I completely and absolutely give up in 50 different ways”.
Sadly it appears they did NOT take the right series of initial steps in the right time frame.
Yes, I know the facts are still a long way off, but ...
The first place where the cascade of error messages (sent automatically by the aircraft down to the ground) was a problem with one of the toilets. Maybe the captain had some really, really bad gas.