SASless
If the Air France Pilots had maintained cruise throttle settings....maintained cruise pitch angle.....maintained heading........what would have been the outcome
In attempt to condense several hundred pages of threads elsewhere - We know the probable outcome if they had done that, but some are claiming that holding current pitch attitude was not the procedure being taught at the time of the accident ( I don't know why not, and we all know pulling to 15 degree pitch at high level wasn't taught either).
Would not RadAlt and GPS have been other sources of height data?
Rad Alt - not at high level, e.g. on the 747/777 Rad Alt only live below 2500 feet.
GPS altitude -
AFAIK not usually available/displayed on most Widebody Flight decks.
The GPS would have been giving them Ground Speed....which if they had been monitoring that they would have had a rough idea of airspeed.
Rough, yes, but they were close to their ceiling and in/near the ITCZ, so a rough idea may not have been any use at all, especially if windspeed/direction was changing rapidly.
......would not OAT have been a rough guide to Altitude?
Perhaps, perhaps not, but fundamentally altitude wasn't their problem until very late in the game, whereas Angle of Attack very much was ...and the AF447 crew had no direct display of that information.
IMHO a combination of startle factor/ poor training/ poor procedures
may be an explanation for the initial pitch excursion on AF447 but IMHO (again) once that aircraft had zoomed above it's ceiling and entered the stall, with added complication that the stab had automatically run LE down, I'm not sure many pilots, startled or not, white shirts or not, fixed wing or rotary, would have recovered the situation.
(BTW for the OP - even the likes of 747s and 777s have windscreen wipers
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