At the time of the incident the co-pilot was flying?
NO !
First :
The autopilot was flying, the co-pilot in charge of turning the autopilots buttons, but he certainly was NOT flying.
Flying is : "I" have the stick and throttle in hand, and "I" control where the aircraft is going.
For reasons yet unknown to us, the autopilot could not cope with the situation, and left the pilots in an unrecoverable position.
Be it autopillot or sensor failure feeding wrong information to the autopilot is another discussion.
On a second side note:
Concerning general flying.
What ever happened to basic attitude indicator flying?????
Looking back at the AF447 video, the attitude indicator is clearly showing a WAY nose high attitude from start till impact.
Whatever, whenever fails, go back to basics.
Attitude, attitude, attitude. Wings level, nose ON the horizon, ball centered.
On a third note:
Basic aerobatics should be MANDATORY for ALL pilots.
IFR aerobatics on instruments should ALSO be made MANDATORY simm training.
Simple upset recovey is clearly NOT sufficient.
Well, the results are here. Pffft, unfortunately, again.