RetiredF4 wrote (post 1633): “I´m interested in the "why", and as anybody can have a reason to do something or to don´t do something, the answer might be in the interactions of PF input and AC reaction as felt and understood by the crew.” (Re why did the PF pull back into and keeping the stall.)
Unless BEA release more CVR data or an analysis of that plus other data, I doubt if we will ever know for certain, but early on in one of these threads, there were at least two theories put forward by others:
1. Initial pull inadvertent, while “stirring mayonnaise” trying to control roll. PNF was telling PF to be more gentle with the SS, (but PF took little or no notice?).
2. Soon after, however, PF was evidently doing it on purpose. Possible reason – he thought they were overspeeding, and was trying to raise the nose to correct this. (If at the same time as TOGA, this seems to me inconsistent thinking on his part – but comments like “see the crazy speed”, later “I have been pulling up most of the time”, and reported high noise level which a witness is rumoured to have heard on the CVR playback suggested to some that he confused stall and downrush noise at high AoA with overspeed noise, probably never having heard either before. Didn’t he also try brakes, until PNF told him not to? Also, after PNF took over SS control briefly and stopped pull back, PF resumed (without the mantra “I have control”) and pulled back again, AIUI. That had to be deliberate, and not agreeing with PNF’s apparent belief that it was not overspeed.
(These were the tentative conclusions of ATPL’s – I am simply recalling them.)
These are the reason I mentioned that when a stressed pilot forms the wrong conclusion, he/she tends to stay with it regardless of ineffective attempts to correct the wrong problem, in my post 596 on the “final crew conversation” thread on R&N.
Last edited by chrisN; 4th Nov 2011 at 11:56.