Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
This takes me to BOAC's question about a crew allowing their aircraft to head into orbit: what airline pilot, flying at altitude, would find a 16 deg nose up attitude something other than abnormal?
Why would either let that nose attitude sustain?
This goes back to what may not be answerable: what did each member of that cockpit crew see in front of him, and what was he paying most attention to?
This is where (and why) I keep going back to Birgenair - where a very experienced pilot stalled and span his 757 despite the fact that the only fault on the aircraft was a single blocked pitot tube. It is impossible to know what was going through his mind, but nevertheless - even with both his F/Os calling "ADI" and "Stall" repeatedly, he apparently did not process the information that the ADI was giving him - that he was excessively nose high for the phase of flight he was supposed to be in. Attempts to remedy the other factors in that accident have been included in pilot training and bulletins from the manufacturers (and indeed a design change to the 757) over the years, but the fact remains that psychological factors in an incident of this nature are possibly not as well understood as they could or should be.