Threading weather
There's a lot of focus on the excessive climb and descent rates, and a lot of previous conjecture about why the pilots would have made the wrong decision. Until we are certain otherwise, I prefer to give the pilots the benefit of doubt as to their experience and judgment in the moment, and suggest they may have done exactly what some said they should have done: request an altitude deviation and then when that was not forthcoming, initiate it anyway because they had good reason to. If that happened the pilots could have been responsible for the initial portion of the climb angle, to which was then added an unfortunate happenstance in the form of a strong updraft or other turbulence that contributed the rest of the climb angle, resulting in the (apparent) rapid climb and apparent subsequent rapid descent which conjecture suggests was due to loss of speed and stall.
If the Very Best Pilot would have initiated a climb based on the info he had, made during a period when instruments were completely functional and distractions were minimal or zero (distractions not yet having begun), and chance then gifted him at exactly the wrong moment with the bad luck of a weather condition that he quickly realized was putting, or had already put his AC in a dynamic position beyond its capabilities, and THEN the distractions set in with a vengeance, the very best pilot would have done everything right, according to all the books and best known practices, but had found himself in a situation where recovery was very unlikely. More than one cause, as the quotes have said.
mstram, I think others have clearly pointed out that airline routes are generally established leaving pilots with the task of transiting storm lines by smaller course deviations. As has been written, if pilots had the lattitude to avoid all possibly dangerous weather, a lot of flights would not fly, and those pilots would be out of a job.
Screaming headlines: screaming alarms probably came after things had gone awry, not before. Headlines care less about timing than about screaming.
Last edited by Leightman 957; 21st Jan 2015 at 16:45.
Reason: screaming alarms