There are some significant human performance issues raised in the TA363 report . From Aviation Herald:
The MAK reported that the French BEA performed a sensorical simulation with the aim to model how the crew could lose spatial orientation. The model suggested that after initiating the go around the feel of the pitch angle of the crew and the actual pitch angle were in agreement until about +14 degrees, when the nose rose further to 25 degrees the crew still felt the pitch increase to 17 degrees. Subsequently, when the actual pitch began to decrease the felt pitch continued to increase until reaching +25 degrees, in this phase first nose down inputs are recorded on the flight controls. The felt pitch and actual pitch subsequently completely separated, as the aircraft settled in the dive further increasing nose down inputs were recorded.
The MAK reported that the British AAIB performed simulations with the aim to determine whether somatogravic illusions were present. The AAIB concluded that in the absence of proper control of the instrument readings the crew could have perceived during the transition from climb to dive after the missed approach, that the aircraft was flying inverted.
The MAK performed simulator tests with a number of pilots having them go through a scenario similiar to the accident flight, in particular forcing a go around at intermediate height with the autopilot disconnecting at the initiation of the go-around by pressing the TOGA button. The MAK reported that the vast majority of crews coped well with the scenario but found it difficult to master reporting highly increased stress levels, especially when the pilot monitoring did not provide full assistance. A number of pilots, although the autopilot disconnect aural and visual alerts are very distinct and have high attraction potential, did not catch the fact, that the autopilot had disconnected, several silencing the alerts by pressing the AP disconnect button, a number (about 42% of the pilots tested) not recognizing the alert at all and therefore responding with a substantial delay or not reacting at all. None of the pilots participating in the test was able to answer all questions to the procedures correctly, the MAK reported that 28% even believed the go around was automatic on autopilot despite the AP disconnect alert indicating lack of knowledge and a substantial gap between theoretic knowledge and practical skills.
Of all pilots participating in the test only one third mastered the go around successfully. Only 28% attempted to achieve a suitable pitch angle after initiating the go around aiming for +15 degrees of nose up, others began to react only between +20 and +37 degrees of nose up attitude and airspeeds as low as 90 KIAS with stick shaker activation. None of the pilots was able to level off at the assigned altitude.
In a second part of the experiment a test pilot produced a pitch up upset similiar to the accident flight and then let the participating pilot recover the aircraft. None of the pilots took the right decisions and none was able to recover the aircraft. The most common mistake was to believe, the control wheel would return to the neutral position on its own, this mistake however resulted in a substantial acceleration of the nose down movement resulting in rapid increase of the dive and vertical accelerations between +0.5G and -1.2G. The MAK annotated that in real flight such an acceleration likely causes the temporary and permanent incapacitation of passengers, cabin crew and even flight crew and may cause injuries to occupants.
The common mistakes during the upset recovery noted by the MAK were non-optimal application of flight controls especially if the aircraft is in a bank, no reselection of flaps in order to adjust to the current airspeed resulting in flap limit exceedance and loss of additional height, the non-use of speed brakes. The MAK reported, that after demonstration of the correct upset recovery technics almost all pilots were able to apply the technics and recover the aircraft, suggesting that the result of the experiment was mainly the result of lack of pilot training with respect to upset recovery.