As a non-heavy pilot, I have really enjoyed the posts here and "meeting" the pilots and engineers. I also appreciate the comraderie and the warm welcome I have received, being a lite pilot and all that.
This quote applies to the heavy pilots as much as to my genre,
"Only the spirit of attack born in a brave heart will bring success to any fighter aircraft no matter how highly developed it may be" - Galland
We initial cadre of the Viper took this to heart, and despite all the "protections", or what we called "limits", imposed by our FBW flight controls, we did just fine. That being said, the jet was so easy to fly that we lost pilots just because of that. We did not have the cosmic auto-throttle or autopilot that the 'bus has. But the jet would still do what the engineers had programmed despite our excessive commands. For example, one test bird measured over a hundred pounds of back stick by the pilot. This was funny, as max command was about 34 pounds. Nevertheless, the jet gave you everything it could without departing from controlled flight. We quickly became "spoiled".
So I question the current mentality of the folks up front on my airliner. Are they simply system monitors or are they pilots?
Do they spend more time in the sim setting up the flight management system routes, waypoints and altitudes and such than considering what they would do when a flock of geese entered both engines shortly after takeoff?
I realize that the sims prolly don't handle "out of the envelope" flight conditions very well. But my experience on a sim flight check was that the instructor threw everything in the book at you. So I imagine that the major carriers are now exposing the crews to the UAS problem and loss of other data that the flight control system uses.
I doubt that the stall recovery techniques we have discussed here will get much attention. Why? Because most here would not have held back stick after the airspeed went south, but we would have simply kept the attitude and power we had when the event occurred. Then figure out what the hell was happening.
Look at this, and imagine what I did... gear up and then....
Well, left stick and the sucker kept flying. Reduce power to stay at the same speed as I knew the thing was still flying at that speed so why be a Chuck Yeager?
The FBW was giving me max left roll except for the extra pound or two of stick command I was applying. So the FBW prevented a serious situation. Not to imply the jet was easily controlled, but we got her back on the ramp in one piece, and I had a stiff drink shortly thereafter.
So how would the current crop of "system monitors" react to something similar? And we did not have over 30 previous incidents - I was the first.