Training, experience, design philosophy
A few good points recently.
I hitch hike on RF4's comments, if you will excuse me.
The military guys here flew jets with vastly different operational requirements, and some of our jets had vastly enhanced performance characteristics than the 'bus. So we flew the things to the edge of the envelope and maybe beyond during training. When we encountered a "bad" condition, we usually had seen it before and responded according to procedure and training. This was not the case with the AF447 crew.
There is no substitute for experience. You can fly a simulator all you want, but until you see and feel the real thing in the real situation, you are not fully prepared. Simply following a rote procedure will work 90% of the time, but that remaining 10% can be, and often is, fatal. It is very hard, very expensive, and maybe foolhardy, to experience stalls and high AoA flight conditions in a big commercial jet. Only way around this is to have a small fleet of planes to see and feel the flight characteristics of stall entry, and recovery. Sorta like the Shuttle folks used to practice their approaches.
Another thing I saw when checking out folks in the USAF Reserve and Guard was how commercial airline folks could go from flying the Viper or SLUF or Thud or Double Ugly on weekends to a 737 or 757 for their "day" job. i would take those guys and gals any time in a big jet that had entered unknown territory. So there IS A WAY.
The design philosophy that assumes engineers can build a jet that "protects" the crew and SLF's from all possible contingencies is failing us. As with your auto, you must be able to master the beast without a plethora of control laws and "back up" modes, and such. You must first of all, and lastly, be a pilot.
I'll go back to my cave now....