Blame is starting to creep into the thread. It didn't take long. Someone started writing how pilots don't know how to use the weather radar. Now we're getting accusations of trying to fly over the weather, and that there are so many pilots nowadays who "don't know anything about high altitude flying". I'm not so sure about that.
My wife is not a pilot. Nor are her family pilots. None of her in-laws, their children or our children are pilots. Some of the relo's are heading off tomorrow for 'wherever'. They are suddenly unsure of what it is I do, as if they ever knew. AF447 is the conversation no-one is having. They're too damn scared to even think about it. So I think I can see this from the perspective of non-pilots reading this thread.
Most are uncomfortable with flying, period, and often ask "what carrier should I avoid" in the hope of not falling out of the sky at night over a foreign shore or sea. And when tragedies occur such as with AF447, the easiest answer to fill the dreaded hole of naivete about how pilots fly airplanes is that pilots don't know how their airplanes fly; don't know what they are doing; don't know how to use a weather radar; don't know about high altitude flight; don't appreciate that contingency fuel ("er, what's that?") is for contingencies, oddly enough; don't know that if you ... and so on and so on.
Often times, events occur that are above the experience level of the men and women on the job at the time. It would appear this is what happened, else the airplane would not be lost. Flying is inherently dangerous. The environment in which flight occurs demands respect, as anyone who has ever been near a giant Cb well knows. Aviation demands attention to detail. There is nothing, not a shred of evidence, to show our fallen colleagues operating AF447 were not aware of these intrinsic facts of flight.