A couple of thoughts
Roger is an aviation expert?
Except for the fact that they were flying during daylight, the pilots of the August 2008 Paris-Madagascar Airbus 340 faced identical problems to those that later confronted flight 447 to Paris.
When the captain lost reliable airspeed due to pitot tube icing, he did not set power and pitch according to flight procedures or maintain level flight as prescribed by the Air France emergency procedure checklist.
OK, so both crews had trouble implementing procedures, or recognizing what the malfunction was.
In the midst of heavy turbulence, he immediately descended 4,000 feet, ignoring both the flight director and a brief stall warning.
“Because he could see the horizon he had a major advantage over the Air France pilots who were blindsided in a storm at night,” says a technical expert who has read the investigator’s summary of the previously undisclosed Madagascar flight report.
Sorry, but I find this to be deliberate ignorance.
Professional pilots know how to fly on instruments, using reference to attitude indications displayed on their primary flight instruments.
You can refer to the artificial horizon and fly with reference to it, just as the captain on the other flight flew with reference to the real horizon.
According to an online update to a book on the crash, Air France and Airbus failed to notify pilots about a crisis aboard a Paris to Madagascar flight on August 16, 2008, that bore striking resemblances to the calamities which befell flight AF447 over the south Atlantic nine months later.
The other link has the above.
Sorry, a malfunction is not by definition a crisis.
For people who write for a living, they sure go out of their way to get words and meanings wrong ... if they are selling themselves as aviation experts.
