As many have concluded, this is a scary similar to the AF447 horror story.
Disclaimer: I am a concerned SLF with a huge interest in aviation.
What I do not see much is references to the weather. The report clearly states that the weather was not a contributing factor, but if you weigh in the weather conditions the similarities becomes even more awful.
1) Somewhat adverse weather in both cases.
2) A technical fault (in AF447 the probes -> unreliable airspeed, QZ had a rudder glitch)
3) which is not responded to according to SOP (seriously, resetting CBs inflight, that was a bad bad idea even before that Northwest plane without flaps some years ago)
4) Neither technical fault should have had any adverse consequences had the crew followed SOPs.
5) Pilot Flying is the FO.
6) Capt is not situationally aware.
7) Noone has formal control of the airplane.
which tragically ends with...
8) So FO puts all his efforts into stalling the **** out of the plane as hard as you possibly can.
Now, how comes that two FOs can do such extreme harm to people and matter? Many are calling for extended training, and now I wonder: How much more training can you get? How many hours of "nose down, gain speed" do one person need to avoid or recover from a stall?
Here you have a FO with 2000+ hours. He should know how NOT to stall something, right? Yet he didn't. In AF447 the FO was a glider pilot during free time. He would have known tons about how NOT to stall the bird. Yet, when manure reached the air condition he goddarn sat on that side stick all the way into the drink.
So I would guess that there is more to it than just increased training. There is something going on that we might not yet see. It might have something to do with the side stick/yoke thing. I do not think we should dismiss that possibility. While there have been lots of stalling accidents with yoked airplanes, they have all included some kind of mechanical failure or, as in the Colgan case, extreme fatigue and/or flying in the circadian low. (Not counting Asiana here, that was very low altitude.)
As an SLF I find it troubling that people who, by all reasonable assumptions (flying hours, flying experience), should have the skills to... well, fly... they still don't. I don't believe that any of these FOs believed they weren't up to the task. I believe they did everything necessary to succeed and yet they failed so miserably.
So, can this happen to you who write here? Can you too one day end up in the big blue with the whole world condemning you for being a product of "p2f"? I think you could. So please, if you believe "more training" is what is needed, press your concerns with your airline. Be vigil, fly more in your free time. Challenge yourself with some home sim software. And be aware that maybe there is something we not yet know from these accident reports. The circumstances are soo soo similar, there must be something more than just "more pilot training" as a response.
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What also concerns me is that two very similar accidents can happen. This tells me that the number of near misses must be reasonably large. Which is very unsettling.