AF 447 Thread No. 8

[AlphaZuluRomeo]

+1 NeoFit

Also I remember one fellow poster (can't remember who precisely, sorry...), who said as a captain he sometimes asked his F/Os: "look at me, not the instruments, and tell me without cheating what is our pitch right now" (aircraft in cruise). IIRC many couldn't say precisely.

Perhaps that's one reason? (is it good or bad, I'm not sure)
5° & CLB, as a memory item. That is what you must know, for the time needed by the PNF to get the QRH at the right page, and crawl through the table for your aircraft current weight/alt.

I wonder if it would not be better (and simpler?) if any crew member could tell what are the current stabilized pitch & power settings, in order to maintain those should the A/P and/or A/THR drop off, for whatever reason. But as the shared experience of the above quoted captain teached me, this knowledge seems not (enough) widespread...

[edit] would like to add that, even if this question is interesting, I see it as unrelated to AF447 where the crew neither maintained standard cruise pitch&power, neither set 5° & CLB as per the published procedure if they had condidered the safe conduct of the flight was affected, which I don't think was the cas, at this point.
(and BTW yes, I'm aware of the "unsafy condithingy" brandished by totally un-agended people, based on a memo from an avionic manufacturer ; this memo was twofold IMO: to alert about potential danger and (in the mean time) to cover said manufacturer's assets)