4080
I wouldn't call it sequential criticism, just trying to analyse the facts; I think we all know that chair flying, or even sim training is one thing, but real life emergencies are something else. This could explain the added stress, and the fact that a pilot would have basic human reactions,(pulling up instead of down, not run through the checklist properly even though you know it by heart, etc) instead of a "well trained" pilot's reactions.
About AF447... Well we all agree that they messed up BIG TIME, but it was a dark black night, above the ocean, lots of alarms, unreliable instruments (at least what they thought) plus high altitude stalls are said to be harder to recover from usual stalls (I didn't try, and don't want to).
I actually think if one of the other pilots was PIC, they might not have crashed. Bonin kept pulling up, up, and up on that stick. On the CVR he even admits "we're descending but I've been pulling back for a while" and Captain Dubois tells him "no, no don't pull up". The PNF, from his words on the transcript, seemed to have grasped the situation a little better. But unfortunately, he did not take over command. And I can understand that.
What I really find incredible though, is NOT not being able to break the stall, (even though they had 4 minutes to do it), but GETTING INTO that stall in the first place. Bonin should have known better than recklessly pulling on the stick and climbing 3000 feet in a few seconds when they were already very close to max cruise altitude for their given weight, and the air temperature.
And, even more unbelievable, as you can read on the transcript, even though his colleague expresses his worries saying "we're passing 10000 feet", and then saying "damn it, we're going to hit, I can't believe it" Bonin replies "but what is happening here", proof he still had no clue what was going on, even though the altimeter must have been unwinding down at 10000ft/mn!!!!!
All the while Captain Dubois is sitting behind, watching them, saying a couple words and not doing much.
Once again, my personal analysis of the situation, we'll wait for the human factors specialists and what they have to say about that.