Points raised that got me thinking again:
Once aeroplane was back at FL350 indicated, there was no reason to pull anymore, yet he pulled and pulled and pulled, reaching an apogee of FL379, 2900 ft above cleared level. If there was a reason to keep pulling, it was not on altimeter anymore.
As before, the unanswerable "what was he seeing" during this time segment comes to mind.
The fact that a 5deg pitch isn't as harmful as a 15deg pitch-up is beside the point: Why pitch-up at all when in cruise flight just because the pilot considers that there is "immediate risk to the safety of the flight"? Where is the "immediate risk"? In my view, there is apparently far greater risk in destabilizing the airplane in cruise flight than in keeping it level, for troubleshooting. Thirty-odd other crews seem to have agreed with this view.
While all thirty of the other crews were not AF, what is the likelihood that all 30 or so events were shared and understood by crews at the time? Many no doubt were familiar with them via however safety reports and updates are distributed ... but how well understood? Probably unknowable.
Why destabilize a transport aircraft in cruise flight when a better course of action is to keep the pitch and power settings which existed prior to the failure?
IN the thread that alludes to "another 447 avoided" that same question can be asked, given the altitude excursion they experienced. Perhaps the crew in that incident has an answer?
What we do know from the CVR is that no normal/abnormal ops SOPs and no CRM procedures took place.
An AF training/cultural issue. (Could also be termed a standards and standardization issue).
After ongoing discussions between parties including EASA, Air France on April 27, 2009 issued a modification to replace all pitot probes on all their long range A-340/A-330 aircraft with the first replacement batch of probes arriving a week or so before the AF447 accident. Review the tables of known events, at the time of the BEA report, starting on page 100 where at least 2 pitot tubes were blocked with ice.
This hull was perhaps a few weeks away, maybe a few months away, from its tubes being replaced.
Ouch.
