Bob,
Thanks for your thoughtful response...
I am a fast jet pilot not an airline pilot so I will happily defer to those more knowledgeable than myself. However, I’m not quite getting your point.
Well, they're all aircraft, with fundamentally similar characteristics, so that shouldn't get in the way of our discussion. I'll try to clarify.
If an aircraft has full power applied (for virtually the entire time) and descends at 35 AoA from 35000 until impact how is this happening if not done by the pilot?
Let me tackle this a couple of ways. First, lets say that we were able to freeze time with AF447 established early on in the descent to the ocean, and ask each of the crew 'what are you doing?'. I believe they would all be unable to give cogent answers. If we then ask, 'what is happening?', I anticipate the same result. Therefore, I can't say that 'they did x', where x is any intended action, with knowledge of the possible or probable outcome.
Another approach: you're driving along the motorway, and a truck in front of you drops a large stone which bounces off the road and through your windscreen, and strikes your forehead. Immediately, you lose your sight. You do what instinctively seems right, and apply the brakes, and continue to steer, using your mental model to try to stay on the carriageway. Moments later, your car hits the crash barrier. Did you drive it into the barrier? I would say you did not. You were physiologically blind to your situation, in the same way that the AF crew were cognitively blind to theirs. Like them, you were unable to process and function. Like them, you continued to 'do things', but those things were, with hindsight, wrong.
I know there was a ‘dual input’ issue and then one of the guys was trying to take corrective action. The Captain seemed to appreciate there was a stall but the FO kept his stick fully back trying to climb.
May we leave aside dual inputs? (I will say that independent stick position with summing is one of the aspects of the A design which I am very critical of).
Considering the full back stick, early training is often very powerful. The first time I flew an Airbus FBW simulator, I was shown that, whatever the problematic situation I was in, I could simply apply TOGA thrust, hold the stick fully back, and watch the aircraft fly away at its peak performance. This was common teaching, and yet was fundamentally and fatally wrong.
Do you use the acronym SABIRS in the civilian world for signs of the stall? The last one is ‘stick fully back’.
No we don't -- but we should (though we need to adapt it because our stabiliser is much more powerful than the elevator, so the stick could be anywhere, if the stab is extremely LE-down. I do cover it, usuallly as a discussion point, in which I name the other symptoms of the stall and ask which is missing. Very few people get it.
I understand that there are different modes or laws with the AP (my current jet has autopilot but far more simple than an Airbus) which will affect handling etc. The basics still apply though.
The basics do apply, but flying with protections had become one of the basics, as illustrated by the 'hold the stick back to live' teaching I mentioned. My personal philosophy is that envelope protection which may not be available when it's most needed, is worse than no envelope protection at all.
This is not me disagreeing with you necessarily but I still do not understand how you can say the pilot did not hold the aircraft in a stall. I know it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to hold it in a stall but the stick fully back is what caused the stall isn’t it?
If we place responsibility for stalling the aircraft on the pilots, we are destined to repeat their failures. Any modern textbook on human factors will illustrate this with words such as, 'the identification of human error is the beginning, not the end, of the investigation'. Investigative agencies would do well to heed those words, though few do.
I understand the speed mis-match, caused by icing, was the initial problem but if held straight and level the aircraft would have continued on its merry way until clear of the icing conditions.
In a perfect world, the pilots would have recognised the instrument failure (well in a perfect world the recurring faults with the system would have been dealt with before they carried hundreds to their watery grave, but I hope you take my point). They would have resolved it: 'I see that we have cruise thrust, and a suitable pitch attitude, but the speed seems wrong'. They didn't set out not to do that, they behaved the way their training, experience, nature and nurture, and so forth, destined them to.
I'd like to quote another poster here, posting in a different thread. His username is FH1100 Pilot, and he is writing about a helicopter which crashed following an unexpected double-engine flameout at low height, at night. The pilot's name was Dave:
Like all of us, my ego makes me want to sit here and think to myself and promise you that *I* surely would have done a better job in that situation. But I cannot guarantee that. Perhaps I would have done the same thing, basically sitting frozen on the controls for those eight brief seconds. I like to believe I'm Chuck Yeager/Aaron/Norris all rolled into one awesome human bean. Most of the time though I'm just Chuckles the Clown. I cut that Dave guy a lot of slack.
Having done what I've done in my career, and seen what I've seen, those words resonate very powerfully indeed.