Didn't manage to see all of the prog on telly, but a couple of questions:
The wake vortex encounter did not look particulary bad and the supposed contol inputs look excessive for such a manouvre. How bad in the opinion of jet pilots was the encounter?
My own feeling is that the control inpts were either caused by a mechanical/software problem (similar to Wino's posts) or two pilots trying to control and perhaps adding to each others actions (although I doubt that). However that is only a feeling and I would have to see a lot more evidence to actually decide that.
My commercial experience at the moment is on a small turboprop and I am training onto the 757 at the moment so I read the discussion about rudder with interest. Certainly in the Jetstream I never used rudder (or thought about it) to correct turbulence or wake encounters. I was however a little bit excessive on my briefings about thunderstorms when first out of training and talked about pitching to the stick shaker in the event of windshear, mostly due to some weather videos I had seen discussing microbursts and my sim training. That was when I was just starting my career though - unlike those in the accident.
Secondly, a question about training. The AA trainer on the programme said he had never heard that a reversal was bad news (which really surprised me, as I thought it was bad), yet all big aircraft manufacturers susequently said it was. Now what else are we missing? It seems to me that basically as airline pilots we are trained to fly from A to B on a normal sort of flight. We are also trained to deal with engine failures/fires etc and the multi crew bit which is all good stuff. But how much handling do we really do? How many people really understand the envelope of an aircraft? When you become a trainer, what extra handling/engineering type training do you get? If there is none, then the guy who teaches you in the sim or on line and tells you what you can and can't do is not in a position to tell you in some respects. This became apparent to me when a training captain with a non technical background told me things that turned out to be totally wrong about a bit on the aircraft (contrary to my technical training and another engineers view). Perhaps this will start to age old discussion of do we teach (for instance) spinning, or just how not to get into one? My point is that we appear to be missing some important aspects of flying. Certainly the upset training on my ATPL course was minimal and the spinning training was poor, with most people not really knowing what it was all about. I do not say this as a criticism of any airline or training establishment, but more of the culture we have in the airline industry. Also, I do not add this bit to say that the pilots caused the accident, but to widen the discussion as to the quality of our training and abilities. Comments welcome.