Originally Posted by
derjodel
That A330 did not actively and without a warning try to kill everyone though. It told the crew it's going to direct law, it produced stall warnings. If anything, what that A330 didn't do was drop the nose rather than
maintain high AoA when it was stalled. If it did, probably everyone in the cockpit would recognise it was a stall. Ok, another thing that A330 didn't do was saying "hey guys, are you sure pulling the stick is a good idea under these circumstances?".
The problem was that the AF447 entry to the stall was not a classic entry. A zoom climb to above service ceiling with the sidestick held continually fully back. This put the aircraft on the wrong side of the drag curve and it went into a nose high stable stall with insufficient power to maintain height. This was pure mishandling by the pilot flying. So the court/prosecutor will be interested in knowing from Air France how much training at manual / alternate law flying at high altitude had the crew been given and how often did they receive refresher training in manual flying at high altitude in alternate law. I suspect that the answer to both questions is very close to none.
For the Max, the airlines could/should say how often pilots trained in manual flight and maintaining neutral trim with the thumb switch on the control column?