interesting similarities
One may want to compare this accident with Pulkovo Flight 612 accident:
- in both cases, aircraft stalled at high altitude when crossing severe turbulence;
- in both cases, pilots were perfectly aware of weather conditions and made attempts to avoid flying into the worst;
- in both cases, pilots were mainly pulling the stick (control column in case of Pulkovo 612) instead of applying proper stall recovery procedure until it was too late.
And yet:
- Pulkovo 612 was a Tu-154 aircraft, which is not FBW and is lagging almost 50 years behind A330 in terms of automation;
- One of the Pulkovo 612 pilots was a former aerobatic champion, so he probably knew something about stalls and stall recovery;
- Tu-154s have AoA indicators in cockpit, which provided meaningful and valid information throughout the accident. Also, pitots did not freeze and the airspeed indicators were also valid.
Yet it seems that in both cases pilots either did not recognize that the aircraft has entered fully-developed stall, or somehow failed to apply proper recovery procedure.
One can probably draw a conclusion that such proposed measures as "upgrading the pitots so that they never freeze" or "reducing level of automation" (whatever falls into that category) would not prevent such accidents from happening again.
Just my 2 cents.