Retired F4's flight deck sounds ideal, just red, yellow and green actions to worry about. ("simples !") Even I might cope...
AF447's PF was for the time Acting Captain. They had not been able to contact Dakar. I do not know who they might have been able to contact. There were drills for loss of airspeed. ( From NWA and TAM we now know that this may have been of relatively short duration. Jetstar's was a few months later. All four were over water- although that may not be relevant. Different makes of Pitot appear to have been used.)
If one could reasonably anticipate the loss of Pitots leading to the need for hand flying for,say, half an hour, ought one to try to reduce ones flight level by say 4000 ft. This should give a greater speed range within which to fly, not too slow and not too Mach.
Earlier aircraft had a Penetration Speed for going through Cbs, without any radar, day or night. For me, this was until the 60s.
Last edited by Jetdriver; 2nd Jul 2011 at 14:45.