Quoting iceman50:-
That is complete rubbish stall recovery is NEVER maintain altitude!!!!! and the low speed recovery was NEVER maintain altitude either!!!!
So this and other articles about 'revised procedures' since AF447 and other incidents are all just wrong?
"Investigators have been left attempting to explain why the crew of Air France flight AF447 failed to recover the Airbus A330 from a high-altitude stall, a predicament which has been the subject of a recent revision of safety procedures.
"The revision concentrates on placing greater emphasis on reducing excessive angle of attack - the critical characteristic of a stall - rather than the classical approach of training pilots to power their way out of a near-stall with minimum loss of altitude.
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"The revised recovery procedure was agreed between the major airframers, including Airbus and Boeing, some 12 months after the loss of AF447, although a source familiar with the investigation stresses that the change was "not prompted" by the accident.
"At the heart of the revision is an acceptance that classical high-power recovery is not appropriate for every stall condition.
"Simply applying maximum thrust could be ineffective in reducing the angle of attack and averting a stall, particularly at cruise altitudes where the available thrust would be limited and the engines would require time to spool up.
"There is also a risk that the crew might fail to recognise that the aircraft has crossed the threshold from a near-stall into an actual stall, and continue to apply a recovery technique which is no longer effective.
The new procedure is designed to cover all stall conditions. It recognises that recovering the angle of attack might instead require a reduction of thrust, to regain pitch-down authority, as well as a loss of altitude."
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/05/28/357321/revised-stall-procedures-centre-on-angle-of-attack-not.html
I guess we were all taught 'stall recovery' when we first learned to fly. In daylight, at a reasonable altitude, with plenty of warning, a visible horizon, etc.? And that the very first thing we were told to do was to get the nose down? But I guess that it simply isn't possible to let trainee airline pilots stall an
actual transport category aircraft - so it all has to be done on simulators only.
My impression is that such pilots are in fact taught only 'stall avoidance,' not actual 'stall recovery.' And that it is therefore entirely possible that the unfortunate AF447 pilot heard the stall warning and carried out the 'avoidance' procedure prescribed at the time. But that, further - given that the stall warnings stopped (even though that was, in all probability, only because the airspeed had dropped almost to nothing) - the pilot assumed for quite a while that his 'avoidance manouevre' had been successful?