While all of that is inarguably true, the notion that a "pilot" can be so confused by his training that he's forgotten how to recognize and recover from a stall, is, to me, NOT "sophistication".
Other than the rapidly unwinding altimeter, how do you recognize the stall when your aircraft adopts a relatively stable 16 degree nose up attitude. Is the unwinding altimeter real? (Well, yes, in this case.) Stall warning-its silent. Airspeed- nothing there indicated.
It isn't spinning. Just acts really funky on the roll channel and the pitch channel isn't responding. Sort of like a big easy chair. Has the computer gone stupid? Is this a bad dream? Sorry gentlemen time is up. You flunked the surprise test.
Prior to AF447, no one had characterized the A330 deep stall characteristics. Turns out it is relatively stable. I know there are a lot of professional pilots who must be surprised by this. They were spouting a lot of stall spin theories a year ago.
