The Popular Mechanics account of AF447 leaves out some quotes and doesn't explain their content very clearly, unfortunately, but it appears they were doing that, more or less.
"02:11:37 (Robert) Commandes à gauche!
Left seat taking control!
[...] At any rate, Bonin soon after takes back the controls."
Sometime after 2:12:15: "As the plane approaches 10,000 feet, Robert tries to take back the controls, and pushes forward on the stick, but the plane is in "dual input" mode, and so the system averages his inputs with those of Bonin, who continues to pull back."
"02:13:43 (Robert) [...] À moi les commandes!
[...] Give me the controls!
[...] At any rate, without warning his colleagues, Bonin once again takes back the controls and pulls his side stick all the way back." Next timestamp is 02:14:23 and crash is 02:14:28.
It's not really clear whether Bonin announced his first retaking of controls. I believe protocol would in fact give him formal control if he did, despite his confusion. Robert appears to have been communicating his control correctly but Bonin appears to have been providing input during this time. We'll never know if he didn't realize he was providing input or if he didn't realize someone else was trying to control the plane.
i don't know these people and I'm not a pilot, but is it possible the Bonin wanted to crash the plane? I find it hard to believe that he would continue to pull back on the stick almost the entire time and not 'share' that information, and after Robert took control (by stating 'Give me the controls!'. Just wondering if this is something that would be looked into.
Technically possible but seemingly unlikely. I'm leaning towards Occam's razor here: that would be an awful lot of acting fairly consistent with panicked, unexperienced actions, and if you're a pilot it's not exactly difficult to crash the plane if you want to. Additionally, the decision to fly into the storm wasn't Bonin's, so if he did decide to crash the plane in this manner it would have been a very rapid decision, or a result of pretty specific deliberations like "next time the computer goes into alternate mode and there is confusion and panic in the cockpit I will do it," which again runs against the razor.
