Hi AlphaZuluRomeo.
You say...."I read that as a reference to an existing (at the time, at last) published procedure...."
You well may read it that way. If you could provide the link to this "procedure"?
PJ2's long standing comments are the standard....the only discussion I see around his wise words are that the aircraft (447) needed correction, this is explained in the attitudes reported by the DFDR.
The only "experience" PF had in this sort of airmanship was.....none. Airmanship transcends the book, no volume can encompass all airwork, much is assumed to have been acquired to have been given the certificate. Even with Sim training for this result at high altitude, the responses by the handling pilot would have been a part of some "syllabus", which did not exist.
"Do Nothing Stupid" can be easily written down, and some version of it may have been a "procedure", if anyone at the airline or at Airbus had exercised the foresight necessary to write and disseminate it...But they didn't.
"Doing Nothing" is doing something. It is a decision, same as doing anything else, and is instructed by whatever mental process the pilots had at their service.
Clearly we have been discussing what's missing from the responses PF made, and lack of training, or lack of a published procedure are in the front..... When such a profoundly poor response to a life threatening occurrence is made, the cause is there. We will not ever know the nuances, the pressures, the void of help available to the crew, nor their desperation. Repeating a thousand times "Why so much climb?" ignores the plainly obvious conclusion, and BEA will not miss that. The harridans who harp on the obvious, and blame, miss the point.
Last edited by Lyman; 19th Jun 2012 at 14:04.