It doesn't matter a damn what the aeroplane is. How crude or sophisticated. You do NOT pull the stick hard back when the autopilot disconnects at altitude. You fly attitude, attitude, and attitude. Then, you fly attitude.
Pitch and power. (There were some intriguing comments some months back on how pilots are trained/incentivized to never approach "overspeed" but as we are not mind readers, we aren't sure just what the PF was thinking)
If you go back to the first two weeks of comment on this mishap, as the ACARS data became available, a lot of Professional pilots opined the following:
You fly pitch and power. That would have prevented this mishap, flying pitch and power for the altitude/temp/condition one was in just before the airspeeds went AWOL.
Now that the plane has been found, and some of the info of what went on is coming to light, that simple point remains true.
I asked over a year ago what TTex is asking now:
What was the PF seeing? We don't know, due to how FDR works.
Many have inferred that his artificial horizon/flight instruments, were, absent the airspeed tapes, working as they should. The BEA does not seem to have uncovered any info that leads them to believe otherwise. IF they did, I think that would have been released.
What is disturbing is that what appears to have been a scan breakdown by one pilot was not caught and corrected by the other pilot on hand in the cockpit.
But flying pitch and power are hard to argue against as the ways to avoid such mishaps as AF 447, in an A330, in the future.
Indeed, in most aircraft.
That this approach was not taken is cause for serious concern among all SLF.
How common is the potential for this mistake?
Unknown.