What gets me about this accident is the attitude of other pilots towards the Air France crew.
The general attitude is along the lines of:
They were hopeless pilots - couldn't even recognise a stall - but I'm not, so I'm safe and have nothing to worry about.
Yes, its very easy from the comfort of your lounge chair to criticise this crew and claim that things would have been different if you were in the cockpit that night.
This is an arrogant ignorance - a quality which makes these commentators just as dangerous as pilots as what they are alleging the Air France pilots to be.
What about British Airways pilots? How about United pilots? How about Qantas pilots?
There was over 20,000 hours of flying experience in that cockpit when the aircraft finally hit the ocean.
There are fatal flaws in the man/machine interface of today's highly automated aircraft, but they are well hidden. It takes a certain combination of circumstances to bring them out. And when it happens, we find ourselves scratching our heads at how apparently simple the accident was to avoid.
It's not so simple.
I believe that had the pilots been from Qantas, or any other airline, the result would probably have been the same.
Since then Airbus has learnt much & the results/changes are happening this very day in Sims.
Care to be more specific? I'm not aware of any changes that have yet filtered through to flight training. There has been plenty of discussion, but I believe we are still largely in the head-scratching phase over this accident.
eg made the Stall Warning stay on at all low airpseeds instead of
cutting out below 60kts??
This is just one of the dozens (hundreds?) of little design "quirks" that can align with other little, seemingly harmless quirks to bring down a modern, well-maintained airliner - flown by highly trained and experienced western pilots.
It's not so simple. If it could happen to them, it could happen to you.