Quote from Machinbird:
"Did he have any experience hand flying at altitude? I am thinking he did not since he was flying extensively in RVSM airspace on autopilot. If he had any exposure to hand flying, it was almost certainly in Normal Law in a simulator.
Did he have experience flying in Alternate law with Roll Direct? As I understand, the answer is no. That training was reserved for Captains."
Surely it will come as no surprise that I'm in agreement with that line of argument, and that probably goes for many others lurking in the background - particularly those of us that were used to hand-flying subsonic jets at the same speed and altitude as AF447 in the cruise. But we seem to be going over familiar ground...