Quote...
The passengers, who had just a short time before been pressed into the backs of their seats, were now being held into their seats only by their seatbelts. "At this moment, I would have feared for my life even if I was sitting in the passenger cabin," said one A330 pilot after reading the BEA report. That the plane was in freefall would have been clear to all on board. The nose of the plane pointed skyward at an angle of 16 degrees. "That's more than immediately following takeoff," the pilot said.
Unquote.
Having flown many times and thinking about my built-in senses of horizontal and gravitational, I tend to agree.
The news report was utter rubbish, and included unnecessary sensationalism. And Miles O'Brien wondered why the media gets no respect from the pros.
The passengers were never pressed into the backs of their seats, since the aircraft was losing speed. They were never held only by their seatbelts, since that would require negative G's, which they never would have seen as a result of the maneuvers described in the BEA "note".
The initial pitch up would not have been much different than experienced when rotating for taking off. The ride over the top would have certainly been noticed, when they went from a high rate of climb to high rate of descent, but passenger's behinds would have always been solidly in their seats, not dangling from their seatbelts, as suggested in the article.
Once descending, the rate of descent didn't change, so passengers would have only sensed that the nose was pointed up, somewhat like an initial climbout on takeoff on say a DC-10 or 757. There also would have been heavy buffeting. Given that they were flying at night in a storm, the passengers would have had no outside references to know what was happening, and would not have known they were falling. A clue would have been the change in cabin pressure, but how many passengers would connect that with rapid descent?
To me the unanswered question is then - why didn't the pilots realise they were pointed up towards the sky and they were falling like a leaf?
They weren't falling like a leaf, in the sense of fluttering to earth. As far as the why, that is for the accident report to answer. Like the Colgan Air pilot in Buffalo, they didn't take what should have been an almost reflexive action on hearing the stall warning, namely push the nose down.
They could see the altitude bleading away extremely rapidly. Could they not read the attitude also? At least they knew they were pulling up!
The PF knew he was pulling up, but are you sure the PNF knew it? It's not quite as obvious what the other guy is doing with sidesticks, particularly if you are concentrating on a checklist.
It seems ridiculous in hindsight that pulling up over that length of time and not reducing the descent MUST only mean you are not diving, you are stalled. Easy to say now, but those guys are supposed to be professionals, yes?
Yes, it's easy to say when you know what the end result was, and have had a long time to ponder the situation. Obviously, they were pros, and they were confused about what was happening. The question is why the PF decided to pull back the stick in the first place, since that would indicate what he initially thought was wrong, and set his frame of mind about what needed to be done. It often takes time for someone under great stress to notice things going on around them, since they tend to focus on specific problems with a form of mental tunnel vision. They can therefore miss clues that would be obvious to those not under stress.