It seems to me that there are some issues that we are missing and that maybe need to be stressed. First of all I apologize because English is not my mother tongue, so I hope I would be forgiven for grammar errors. Now let's go back to the topic. For start let me explain my background. Ex Air Force pilot, fast jet and tanker, now professional pilot, held rating on B 737, MD 80 series and now skipper on A 320 series. So we can say I have experienced (and indeed I did) all aerobatic that could be done in a fighter, including obviously stall and spin (they were forbidden but you know...at that time you were not a real pilot if you weren't able to fly such things). I have flown the B 707 as a skipper, and I had the luck to actually experience a real stall and recovery (intentional) at FL 350 coupled with a manifacturer test pilot. Then due to autopilot failure I had the chance to hand fly the thing from Milan to Caboverde (no AP, no ATHR) on course to EZE.
Actually there is no simulator experience that can give a faint idea of what is an high altitude stall: no way. In an heavy aircraft you are close to the Baffin Corner and also remember that the inusual pitch attitude is so extreme that can be very disorienting. Sorry for all of you that fly and stall any Cessna Piper or DA, but there are very few similititudes with a heavy sweptwing jet stalling at high altitude. The recovery also is very...interesting: we lost 12000 ft and we both knew what we were doing, we both went through a very detailed briefing and we were in daylight with CAVOK. It is one of the most vivid experience of my aviator career.
I have flown the B 737 and the MD 83 series: control column better than sidestick? Maybe...I am not really sure of that because it seems to me that when things goes terribly wrong in the flight deck no control column or yoke has been able to save the day.
Now for flying manually tha Airbus: actually when we talk about flying manually we talk about flying a beautiful FBW aircraft in normal law without AP and ATHR....with autotrim and a nice sidestick and a beautiful speed trend...so there is no problem to hand fly the minibus in this conditions.Problems arises when the flight law is degrade in Alternate, but in that case there is no way we can experience manual flight in Alternate law because obviously we cannot degrade intentionally the aircraft capabilities like it happened in this accident. One must understand that in Normal Law a pilot can use the sidestick abruptly to the mechanical stops and the aircraft will always give the best capability her can. Actually a EGPWS recovery from warning is flown exactly in this way, or a severe windshear. Completely different situation in Alternate Law, where the envelope protection is degraded.
An Airbus pilot, like any other pilot, must know pitch and thrust for some situations, and must know the capabilities of the aircraft; in my opinion is required a little bit more discipline in order to understand the actual capabilites of the aircrafts in the actual flying conditions: this is addressed only with the training.
Happy landings.