Talking of distraction, how many of you, hand on heart, can honestly say that whenever you have a visit from the No. 1 or whoever else delivers the coffee to the flight deck in the cruise, that as PF studiously you did not turn around to look at whomever was there, did not listen to the banal conversation, did not chip in with your own 2 penn'orth and concentrated solely on flying the aircraft?
Whilst we accept, under the current training regime, that there should be a 'Safety Pilot' until such time as the trainee has the ability to fly the aircraft on his/her own, perhaps we should reconsider this aspect, as has been suggested; a review of all the training methods in use today.
It may well be that the third person in the cockpit is in fact a contributory factor in this instance and some of the other accidents we have discussed here. Maybe we need to insist on 2 crew aircraft flying with just 2 crew?
As to the events that occurred, it appears we now know pretty well the whole sequence of events. However, stall recovery when in the landing configuration with a ROD of 700 to 1000fpm is entirely feasable with minimal further height loss provided the stall recovery maneouvre is carried out PROMPTLY. (Try it in the sim, if we aren't all obliged to on our next visit!)
Agressively apply Full thrust and set 20 degrees of pitch.
20 degrees of pitch may require some forward pressure on the Control column once the pitch has been attained, however, even with the aircraft trimmed nose up due to the auto-trim funtion, it will not be impossible to hold this pitch angle. Height loss will be in the order of 100 to 200 feet if done correctly.
It appears that basic flying skills were forgotten.
The aircraft was put in a position from which the crew should still have been able to recover.
The situation was made hopeless because a fairly straighforward non-normal procedure was not followed.
What can we all learn from it?
As has been said so many times before, as is written on the top of every page of some airlines QRH, FLY the Aircraft.