AF 447 Thread No. 10

[PJ2]

Hi mm43;

It's my general impression that the circumstances faced by the two First Officers went rapidly beyond their experience and their training. I think this was partly due to the absence of a disciplined response to the event and to the ECAM. The PNF tried to "re-group", but such a response, when not initiated by the PF, is difficult to initiate or re-focus once the PF has already taken an independent course of action. The obvious solution was to take over and lock the PF's stick out of the loop but "the obvious" as it now appears to us gets into hindsight work which always has the solution!

In Canada, the CARS do not require that the stall be demonstrated on fbw aircraft once the initial PPC has been done on a type new to the candidate. In practical terms I believe this lack is being generally ignored and these events are actually being trained in recurrent work.

The one puzzle for me and for which it is impossible to determine a definitive answer is, why take a transport aircraft to a pitch attitude of 10 degrees at cruise altitude, at any time? Such pitch attitudes have an inevitable outcome in terms of rapid energy loss and as such are deeply ingrained and counter to experience in flying these aircraft.

A one-degree pitch change is dramatic enough, and so large changes are just never, ever done in normal flight conditions where the airplane was and remained stable, which this was. The assumption is that everyone knows this "through experience and their imagination" but perhaps that is not always the case especially where there is little to no opportunity to hand-fly these aircraft and / or it is never taught.

Many answers have been posited as to why the pitch-up...PF responding to loss of altitude (indicated...about 350'), or initiating the memory item of pitching the airplane up in response to the loss of speed indication (as per the UAS memorized drill), turbulence and inexperience in manual flying thus little appreciation of the massive inputs that small stick movements have, somatogravic illusions...There are numerous explanations which we, with full knowledge, may posit but can never know.