I usually just read these threads and remain silent because "it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought stupid, than open your mouth and remove all doubt", but I keep reading something that must be addressed.
Stall recovery vs. "approach to stall" recovery. Actual pilots can now skip to the last paragraph.
To those of you not studied in stall training above the private/commercial level, we DON'T train nor practice "stalls" at the ATP (US) level. We train for "approach to stall". Pilots of my generation fully understand that you must reduce the angle of attack - lower the nose - to unstall the wing. We also know that the ATP (an instrument rating) requires that we recover from an approach to stall with minimum altitude loss. In an approach to stall, the wing never stops producing lift. When the system senses the onset of a stall, it provides warning; warning that if followed will result in preventing the stall and avoiding altitude loss. This is simply due to the type of aircraft we fly in the air transport business (those being transport category birds that are certified to give proper stall warning), and to the rules which apply to those aircraft and their airline operation.
Airline pilots fly transport category certified aircraft and train to instrument procedure standards, a situation that demands that approaches to stalls are dealt with by increasing power ( to recover from the low speed condition) and maintaining altitude (to prevent hitting the ground if the approach to stall happened near the ground - as in an instrument approach).
Those of you who continue to stress your disbelief that the pilots didn't dump the nose need to recognize that the pilots were not trained to do so. They were trained to follow their instruments and use a specific procedure to deal with the situation. The AF447 pilots were faced with instruments that couldn't be trusted and a situation for which they had never trained.
In the Airbus I fly, the only concrete information I can see from my seat is the horizon in front of the windscreens. EVERYTHING else is computer/electronically generated. Please remember that when you question the actions of three pilots who were faced with: dark skies, thunderstorms, unreliable instruments, turbulence, no visible external cues, myriad ongoing nuisance warnings, .............. This was NOT an accident caused by a single factor!(IMHO) The final finding will likely indict everything from aircraft systems and philosophy to government oversight to airline training philosophy. In the mean time, let's not waste the opportunity to change things for the better by taking the easy way out and blaming the dead guys.