There have been several references in these threads to the PF’s previous gliding experience, most recently post #625 by Linktrained, and also several suggesting that gliding training would be good for all pilots.
I cannot claim any knowledge of CAT flying, but I do know something about glider flying and gliding training, and also something about gliding accidents and what surviving pilots have said on occasion.
For the record, not all glider pilots take to their training as ideally one should. One pilot I talked to, who crashed following a cable break and spun, luckily surviving, told me he knew the tail had fallen off so that there was nothing he could do. (IMHO, like PF in AF447, he became fixated on a problem he didn’t have, and never diagnosed what he was actually dealing with.) When the nose went down, he “knew” that trying to raise it by pulling back on the stick would not work, because of his “missing tail”, but he tried anyway. When it did not succeed, and he saw the ground spinning round (his words – still did not connect it with a spin), he let go and the glider recovered from the spin itself. Hence his survival, in spite of failing to recognise what he should have been trained to understand.
Good basic training in flying, including stall and spin awareness, is no doubt an ideal that would stand any pilot of fixed wing aircraft in good stead. Unfortunately, there are some pilots who do not learn it well enough. To paraphrase Dozy, I am not saying that this was or was not the case with PF; only that his prior gliding experience (How long ago? How extensive? How good was he?) is not necessarily a useful piece of information.