I agree with YorkshireTyke about the pressing need to understand WHY the crew did what they did. A lot of the opinions here appear to be from people who, I suspect, have never experienced the conditions they found themselves in.
It's all too easy to write them off as incompetent crew and label the whole tragic accident as "pilot error" and carry on regardless. That's what happened before we became more enlightened about accident investigations. I am not defending what they did as it appears inexplicable.
My take, based on the conversation in the last few minutes, is that they failed to recognise they were stalled. A fundamental error but when you have, perhaps, flown into the top of a Cb with all the turbulence, noise, St Elmo's fire etc and are, quite possibly, fatigued then one could fail to spot what would be otherwise be glaringly obvious. Here's a non controversial example: a sim instructor many years ago told me how he gave a crew an RTO. They completed the checks, so they thought, but stopped with full reverse thrust selected and made no attempt to reduce the thrust to idle. The sim, it appears, was vibrating like a good 'un. The moral was/is that what was obvious to the trainer wasn't so to the crew who were clearly hyped for their check. No it wasn't me but I'm sure I have done similar things! Another trainer said after a while you get to see it all - every error you can conceive and a few that you cannot imagine.
Going back to this accident it is imperative to try and understand the mental model they conceived about the aircraft's situation. Why did they get it so wrong? How did they miss what cues were available? Presumably the standby attitude and asi were unaffected so were they ignored.
Lastly, on the subject of FOs acting as commander when the captain is on rest my company sop is that the Acting Pilot In Command (APIC) FO MUST occupy the right seat and they are also Pilot Flying (PF). I don't know what AF sop is but I would be surprised if they would designate the command to stay with the left seat with a FO in it. Also, it does not follow that the most senior FO will always be so designated but they must be APIC qualified. I believe my company does this after one year and it is a standalone sim session. Bear in mind that these FOs will be experienced guys from other companies or ex military - some of whom will be ex captains.
Last edited by BBK; 28th Dec 2011 at 09:20.