Originally Posted by
rudderrudderrat
Then why did the QRH have "EGPWS ALERTS" in the Emergency Procedures?
Using your logic - you would think that "Pull Up" before hitting the ground and apply TOGA power would be instinctive - so why include that one?
My wild-assed guess in this situation would be that stall recovery is taught in single-engined trainers from very early on in basic aircraft handling training. Most single engined trainers are not equipped with EGPWS.
I think Airbus believed they had designed an aircraft that was so well protected and that the chance of stalling was so remote - that a Stall Warning QRH procedure was deemed not necessary.
Well, it's an opinion with merit in a theoretical sense, but I'd be surprised if that tured out to be the case. I remember reading an interview with a pilot in "The Tombstone Imperative" in which he advanced the opinion that things like stall recovery and microburst recovery have been mitigated by the arrival of the large high-bybass turbofans that were introduced with the widebodies and were installed on every new jetliner from the mid-70s onwards - you could just apply TOGA and keep the wings level and the AoA within a certain range and power out of it. It now appears that this is not always the case.
What makes your assertion doubtful for me is that if Airbus truly ever felt that way then they would not have put a stall warning in the aircraft in the first place - yet they did. So from an engineering perspective at least, Airbus always knew it was possible.
You'll find that every Boeing & Lockheed has a dedicated stall warning stick shaker.
So did the VC-10, BAC 1-11 and HS Trident - in fact they pioneered the technology. However, as D.P. Davies said in the third and final edition of HTBJ, pilots had trouble trusting them and adjusting to their presence. Stick shakers in the Trident, 727, 757 and MD-80 have all been ignored on the line with fatal consequences.
As to the other discussion, the presence of supercooled droplets in the area AF447 flew through is debated. Even the BEA won't put the pitot failures down to anything more specific than "ice crystals".