Back to stall handling...
Personally a lot of the comment and opinion on a good few pages recently, makes me 1) worried;
2) think that:
a) The bigger picture is how much 'real life', 'real stall' experience the handling pilot has... it sounds like a stall or an approach to stall warning to some airline pilots is a rare thing - frightening. Isn't this almost de rigeur in sim training, many stalls, in all flight modes - and refreshed regularly as matter of course
b) the only time an approach to stall is really anything other than (initially) a light and progressive push on the stick, is late in the approach. At any other sensible altitude, either totally ignoring stall approach warning or the obverse - loads of power and a heavy nose-down response - seems unlike anything sensible or ordained.
Always, especially if in doubt, ease the stick forward straight away whilst checking immediately the std scan instruments.. and thrust.
c) With the momentum and energy of 200 tons, a slippery shape and at cruise speed, if thrust is as expected, surely nobody has ever had to whack the throttles open and pitch heavily nose down (the two are anyway to some extent counter balanced in the shorter term).
d) If an incipient approach to stall with 35,000' to play with, cannot be handled with a natural small pitch down in the first instance, without fear or fright, then that's not a safe aeroplane. So I presume it is, and plenty of cruise thrust-loss and climb at low thrust incipient stalls are thrown into the training - it must be 2nd nature to fractionally lower the nose immediately - but that's all for a good few seconds.
e) If turbulence, of a strong or severe nature is present it changes the whole picture.... barely mentioned in much of the recent discussion on imagined events and (re) actions to indications and warnings. But wherever you are in almost all dynamic phases of pitch, a buffet, stick shake or airspeed warning still should produce that natural reflection almost immediately, followed by heightened awareness of where the craft is in pitch, attitude and power and trim state. As was pointed out earlier, that was probably all Buffalo shaker required in reality and should have absolute 'programmed in' natural response, from first flight in a glider, a 152, countless sim flights & checks, right up to an A380 for real - if not, we are in serious trouble in the skies.
The big unknown is not so much the way the airspeed might have gone haywire over seconds or minutes - but the onset and if severe turbulence, the level, type and wavelength - was that a big factor. Something we can imagine, pontificate about but really just don't know - it could have been a very big factor, or not a factor at all.
My comments are really not pointed at the AF447 situation, more, why are we even discssuing what is/should be hard-wired as a stall approach response?
Because the a/p kicked out so unexpectedly?
That should be expected in severe turbulence and expectation implies high situational awareness (airspeed/picth/power/trim etc)
If not expected then we have a) a/p fault b) flight data fault. c) something has broken or you've hit something.
Sorry to drag this out... I'm left with a question.
How much manual handling sim-time and real flight-time is built up per thousand hours in heavy to severe turbulence conditions (i.e. when it would perhaps be expected the a/p would find itself on or beyond limts) ?