SIM results.
Since AF 447 I have done the "hi altitude confusion" scenario with a few dozens wide body Airbus crews, lately with SFOs/Cruise capts at the controls.
Scary stuff: When brought into the situation unprepared, only a few have managed to control it, the majority departed into an unrecoverable aircraft state.
The main reason is CONFUSION & FALSE WARNINGS in combination with no default plan. Events develop surprisingly fast, too fast for any QRH study. Regrettably, the AB QRH/memory items deal with the low altitude scenario, not the hi altitude (it is there, but not as immidiate action and is hidden as small print in a table).
Several posts here mention basic airmanship as a mantra. For those of us who have done tail slides in a F-104 or Mirage, airmanship is in the veines, but there are a lot of pilots out there - especially in new airlines in the 3rd world - for whome anything but computerized flight in the middle of the envelope is a grey area. Sad, yes, but a fact of our industry as it is today.
Realising this, Boing have come up with this life saving, simple, easy to memorise procedure. When I teach my boyz this, they survive; when not, they die. Simple fact...
So I either tell my various CEOs to allocate the extra money to hire only proficient, competent aviators (will not happen, of course) or I teach something that works for everyone. I wish AB will soon publish something similar to Boing. Not perfect, but far better than what we have today.
Turbo.
PS: For the smart a***s only: Your 0-wind GPS GS is 500 knots at GPS altitude 40.000'. What is your IAS? (Knowing that can save your day, too.)