To all SOP gurus and FMA junkies:
You are most probably right in all your theories, assumptions, and recommendations. What you all forget however, is that we are all human. In very unexpected and thus stressful situations we tend to have a short brain f@rt and are reduced to a very basic existence and presence as a pilot.
That is when your basic skills should set in, your pilot instincts, your muscle memory or whatever you want to call it.
This will help you through the first ~10 seconds until you get back all your senses.
Many incidents and studies have unfortunately proven --, that the inevitably appearing statements like ‘it was displayed on the FMA’ or that ‘if you had analysed your instruments or indicators’ you would have had a clear picture as to which of the hundreds of magical SOPs or beautiful manoeuvres in the FCOMs would have helped you out of that situation, -- are a cry in the dark.
In moments as described above, our intellectual input receiving capacity is almost zero, the only thing that still works is our tactile input and basic skills and instincts.
Anyone pretending to be able to correctly absorb FMA, CDU and EICAS/ECAM indications at the same time and precision as the PFD indications and engine indicators, when you are confronted with an unusual and unexpected situation, you missed your vocation! You should have applied to Houston!
I admit, i never could. In my 35+ years of airline operation as a pilot, I have witnessed several such difficult situations and it always took me a few seconds to regain my composure and I was almost never able to use any indication in letters or digits, only very basic analogue and pictorial indications.
What helped me out of such situations were those primary, very basic indications and some extremely basic movements on stick and throttle.
Everything else followed a few moments later, they were then very helpful to get back to normal, but never the primary saviours.
But to do so, I am grateful that I was lucky enough to have been allowed a career that enabled me to train and gain experience as to acquire these skills.
I very much doubt that the majority of more recent pilot colleagues were given this opportunity.
That is a huge problem and might be the root cause of many ‘new’ kind of accidents.