Originally Posted by
Organfreak
Not that you were addressing me, but yes...in a heartbeat!
You might want to think that through a bit. Remember that it's looking like instinctive manipulation of the controls without properly assessing the situation was what got them into this predicament in the first place.
I wonder, what could be more extreme than,
"you are about to die!"?
By way of further explanation, this would be no time to be, er, polite.
OK - so... Whether you've responded to seeing the flight controls move, or unusual responses of the aircraft through the instruments at this point you know that something's up, but you don't know what or why. Even with a traditional yoke giving you feedback you're coming into the situation cold - you don't know what the aircraft was telling your colleague and you don't have a feel for what the aircraft is doing. By grabbing the controls with little or no warning you risk startling your colleague, which is in fact incredibly dangerous and you could end up "fighting" each other. One of the advantages to the sidestick system is that by holding the priority button you can "lock out" the other stick if you need to.
This is still bad airmanship however. At the start of the climb, through the point of stall until you have had descended through 30,000ft you are not "about to die" if you keep your head about you. During that period you've got 90 seconds at least to ascertain the situation and develop a response before you're in serious danger. Politeness is certainly optional, but clear communication, knowledge sharing and correct response is mandatory. "I have control" means just that - once the callout is made both pilots have to respect it, and if that means hands-on-lap for the non-handling pilot then so be it.
Bear in mind that Captain Burkill of BA038, for example, only had 30 seconds
before they hit the ground, less than a third of the time between AF447 beginning the climb and passing down through 30,000ft. In that time he managed to ascertain that his F/O was handling the aircraft well - thus taking control would be a waste of time, evaluate all the options available to him to extend the glide and get them over the fence and antennas, decide that the best thing to do would be to reduce flaps to 25 and then execute that decision. These actions were validated by the AAIB officer involved, who said he'd have given him a negative writeup had he tried to take control.
NB : I'm not comparing the two incidents in terms of airmanship or successful recovery - I'm simply using it to demonstrate that by thinking logically and remaining calm, you can do a lot in a surprisingly short time.