Sadly I remember Staines only too well, having been working for BEA at the time.
While I agree that the circumstances and sequence of events were completely different from AFR447, I suppose you could argue that what they had in common was an experienced captain who (for differing reasons) was temporarily out of the loop, two other less experienced pilots (considerably less in PI's case) and, overall, a crew who didn't understand until too late why their aircraft was behaving the way it was.
But that's about as far as you can reasonably stretch the analogy.
One other link, of course, is that the reason we know about the confusion on AFR447's flight deck stems directly from the Staines crash (and others) which led to the introduction of the CVR.
Last edited by DaveReidUK; 25th May 2013 at 15:55.