53 year old pilot flying a manual approach down to minimums with punters on board?
When he can't cope with the go around he engages the auto pilot?
Reminds me of my younger days flying with WW2 pilots who couldn't cope with a swept wing jet approaching way on the back side of the drag curve.
Manual throttle was banned except in the case of an engine out.
Landings were often controlled crashes.
There were a few who due to "ageing" and loss of visual accommodation couldn't read the warning panel and would ask what the warning was while they were trying to manual fly.
My third employer (also "flag carrier") wouldn't allow us to fly manually (we were allowed to fly CWS but when I first tried around 5 grand on approach after an atlantic crossing it was promptly re engaged by sir).
I realized in my late thirties that I my performance was degrading so tailored my use of equipment to my physical condition (night flight, fatigue, etc).
In my last company if I had tried to fly a manual approach to minimums on a check I would have failed.
We did practice raw data as well as FD approaches but only when neither pilots were tired and never with weather below 500ft.
The simulator is the place to play heros.
On the age thread I seem to remember reading that the skipper on AF Rio flight wasn't in the cockpit when it crashed - presumably in the bunk.
If he couldn't remain awake to fly through the most dangerous weather zone on this planet then perhaps he shouldn't have been flying the route.
My third employer flew very differently to my first two, we had to learn a table of configuration+attitude+power= performance.
I initially pooh - poohed the system but realize that they were ahead of their time.
BA only taught that system on Concorde at that time (see Mike Riley's book -stick and rudder).
Apparently prior to the Rio accident AF did not have a simulator exercise at cruise level to cope with loss of air data (Aerlingus did).
And what was a 46 yr old doing in the RHS and not doing?
Command failure or ex military? Seems rather old to be in that seat in AF.
The decision was foolish to fly a manual approach to minimums with punters on board - even if he could. He obviously, on this occasion, had a deficiency in his abilities in managing and understanding the automatics.
My point is; is it a culture and training problem in Air France?