This is an interesting article from Aviation Week:
High-Altitude Upset Recovery | AVIATION WEEK
This is a quote from Sully in the article, that illustrates part of the current over reliance on automation:
Training also needs improvement. "Currently, to my knowledge, air transport pilots practice approaches to stalls, never actually stalling the aircraft. These maneuvers are done at low altitude where they're taught to power out of the maneuver with minimum altitude loss." In some aircraft, they're taught to pull back on the stick, use maximum thrust and let the alpha floor (AoA) protection adjust nose attitude for optimum wing performance.
"They never get the chance to practice recovery from a high-altitude upset," he continued. "At altitude, you cannot power out of a stall without losing altitude." And depending upon the fly-by-wire flight control system's alpha floor protection isn't the best way to recover from a stall at cruise altitude.
There are several fundamental problems with the development of specific procedures like this one (powering out of a stall using AOA protection), that Sully describes.
- The procedure WOULD NOT EVEN EXIST without the automated AOA protection.
- The procedure RELIES upon the automated AOA protection to work.
- The procedure ASSUMES the automated AOA protection will ALWAYS be present.
- The procedure IGNORES the possibility that the automated AOA protection might not be present (as in AF447)
- The procedure IGNORES the physical-ware aerodynamic fact that you cannot power out of a stall with minimum loss of altitude, at higher altitudes.
- The procedure ERODES basic flying skills by teaching pilots to perform flight maneuvers contrary to good basic airmanship (in stall recovery).
This is a fundamental failure of the proper design of procedures, that results from a confused over reliance on automation.