truckflyer:
Pursuant your last line -- 38,000 feet being a long fall -- one of the points we had discussed in this family of threads from a host of different angles was:
If your nose is up and you are still falling, as evidenced by your altimeter continually decreasing and your vertical speed indication being negative, at what point do you diagnose "we are stalled" from that evidence, even if your airspeed indications are AFU? (We'll set aside for the moment an annoying audio stall alarm that goes on and off, see the BEA final report for how that fits in ...)
This may sound simple, but you get into recency of training issues. Also training content.
Typically, airlines do not do actual stall training in the aircraft (valid risk and cost reasons), and do not have simulators that can accurately emulate a stall (lack of data points, apparently).
You then may ask: at what point has any A330 pilot been presented with the visual problem noted above, and asked to diagnose/solve it? In old school training, you could call that situation a degraded panel, or partial panel, stall in IMC conditions. (Under the bag, as it were, in training flights).
That sort of training is apparently not done.
This takes us back to the training that is done, which is stall prevention. Seems that didn't take.
