Originally Posted by
HundredPercentPlease
Really?
You rotate and get a stall warning, and because your engines are "turning and burning", then you just ignore the stall warning? Has it not occurred to you that you may have your high lift devices incorrectly set, and that the fault was the takeoff config system (Spanair)? Or you have been loaded incorrectly? Or you have an engine indication issue (Air Florida)? Just because your engines are "turning and burning" does not mean that any stall detection on rotation is erroneous. Obviously.
Based upon my 36 years/26,000 hours of flying, provided that one does not "jerk" the aircraft into the air, if one rotates the aircraft nose at a normal rate to the take-off attitude, roughly 15 degrees in the B737 at 3 degrees per second, the aircraft go flying when the wings are ready to let it go flying, i.e. when the have created enough lift. And, with both engines running, the aircraft will accelerate. Because of this characteristic, this will cover up a lot of mistakes such as wrong flap setting, wrong power setting, wrong C of G (although that would be more an issue of control column forces to rotate as the stab trim setting is based upon the C of G). This would mean the aircraft would take more runway if heavier, lower flaps setting (1 instead of 5 for example), lower power setting and less runway with the opposite conditions.
Regardless of any of this, surely by 400 ft there would be communication between the two pilots about the indicated airspeed between the three airspeed indicators in the flight deck, particularly since the Captain was an 8000+ hour pilot; the FO was probably shell shocked.
But either way - unreliable airspeed or a bona fide stall - why on earth would the Captain call "Command", i.e autopilot engagement at 400 ft? You do not engage an autopilot when one is in a stall, you do not engage an autopilot with an unreliable airspeed.
To me, this points to an experience, training and attitude problem the world over in modern airline flying. Pilots no longer have the basic flying skills to fly an airplane anymore without autopilot, autothrottle, flight director and, heavens forbid, GPS/RNAV! Where I fly (Canada) we call these people "Children of the Magenta Line". I don't know if other countries use this term or not but what it means is all they know is how to fly the magenta line on the nav display as well as the magenta pointers on the primary flight display.
I know in other parts of the world, hand flying an aircraft is not only discouraged its against SOP's and is subject to the "FDR Police". It's all fine and dandy when things are going well but when the crap hits the fan and one actually has to revert to basic flying skills they are not there, either because they never were there in the first place or, if they were, they have atrophied because they haven't been used in years.
While the MAX incident/accidents have brought this home tragically - trying to use the autopilot in a unreliable airspeed situation or a true stall (take your pick), being unable to trim the aircraft with the electric trim (continuous trim rather than short bursts), being unable to manually trim and fly the aircraft, being unable to manage the airspeed and not going the speed of heat, or questionable airmanship decisions such as continuing to destination with unreliable airspeed, and so on - there have been scores of incidents such as the Korean 777 in SFO wherein the crew could not fly a visual approach on a clear day, etc. Only by pure luck or the incredible survivability of the aircraft that no one was killed in the crash itself. And there are scores of other examples of incidents that could have easily become fatal accidents, just go to avherald.com to see for yourself.
The entire industry - ICAO, IATA, the individual airlines, the individual CAA's, the pilot unions, aircraft manufacturers, etc - need to do some serious navel gazing to get the level of pilot proficiency and training back to the point where paying customers can count on the pilot to be the last line of defense when the unexpected happens such as a double engine failure (US Air). Technology is great but it has its limitations and at the end of the day, trained and competent pilots are still needed when the unanticipated events happen.
Editorial over.