Originally Posted by
bubbers44
Unfortunately this breed is going away and Airbus convinced everybody that stall recovery is not required in training because the bus won't stall in normal law.
Well, hold on just a minute. Airbus said you can't stall the aircraft in Normal Law - but it doesn't follow that such a statement should convince anyone that stalls won't happen. To my mind, airlines didn't ask the important question of what happens if the aircraft *isn't* in Normal Law before making decisions on training. The same thing happened 40 years ago when Douglas assured the industry that losing all three hydraulic systems on the DC-10 was impossible. Thankfully the captain on the flight where Douglas was proved wrong didn't buy it for a second and used his seniority to train himself how to fly the thing on asymmetric thrust.
The PF thought he was protected when he pulled back the SS.
With all due respect, that's conjecture - there's not enough evidence to say why he pulled up the way he did.
Airbus have had their problems over the years, for sure - but to say they're largely responsible for the decline in hand-flying skills is like arbitrarily blaming Ford for the fact that so few Americans can drive a stickshift - the industry and customers moved in a certain direction, and Airbus (and Boeing, MD etc.) supplied products to fit that demand.
The truth is that with ever more crowded skies, automation is going to be more necessary than it has been in the past (with the advent of GPS and RVSM airspace) in order to maintain a degree of safety in traffic. This is a distinct issue from the lack of training for situations where the system fails however - PJ2 did a rapier-sharp dissection of industry attitudes on the previous thread, but what it boils down to is the trend whereby more and more senior airline management have never developed specialist skills relating to the industry, instead being purely business-orientated.