I didn't mean to be automatically assuming automation dependency (even though being "experienced" is not an automatic exclusion from the category -- the famous "Children of the Magenta" video is 19 years old now) -- I'm just coming up with various scenarios that could explain the situation. In short, you can boil my last post down to: If the FD was showing a descent while they were climbing due to misset modes, why didn't they turn it off? And tried to answer that question with a plausible scenario from my experience.
Originally Posted by
SoFarFromHome
If its not pointing to the sky, its not correctly set. STOP and correct it.
Just about this one point, if it's caught on the ground then I agree. But if caught right after takeoff, then any way I see it the right move is to turn it off, and untangle the mess later at a few thousand feet. Not during the initial sequence of gear, flaps, thrust, speed, freq change, etc.