It would have been easily recoverable if the stall horn had worked properly.

Garrison, I'm with you. Indeed, this view hasn't changed much since I made a similar point on p.24 of this thread (before the BEA report was published) where I said:

"Surely AoA (and perhaps a GPS speed indication for good measure) would be very helpful in instances where airspeed indicators have gone doolally and the aircraft computers are assaulting with pilots with a bunch of not necessarily consistent error messages and alarms?

All modern aircraft rely on system redundancy, but can any system be deemed truly redundant if it relies on the same components on each of its legs? (I'm imagining that more than one pitot tube iced up). Given the problems of producing 'true' redundancy in a single measurement system, why not admit that visible workarounds should always be available to the pilot?"

In this case, the first question that needs to be answered is why the PF decided to pull the nose up when the aircraft was in otherwise stable flight at the time the autopilot disconnected. That might explain the mindset that had to be overcome to get things under control again.

While the report isn't perfectly clear, the way I read it, the stall warning sounded at least three times: Twice immediately after the PF initially pulled the nose up, while they were in the steep climb, and once after the climb peaked and the aircraft regained airspeed as it began to fall. The report says the aircraft was stalled for the remainder of the flight, so I suspect the stall warning was sounding continuously thereafter.

The PF reacted to the first stall warnings by trying to lower the nose during the climb, but then later applied TOGA power and pulled back before they had recovered. At some point near the top of the climb, he dropped the throttles to idle, but still maintained the nose-up input.

As they started to fall, he again tried putting the nose down, but when the speed picked up, and the stall warning sounded again, returned to full nose-up input, which he retained to the end, even though the attitude was something like +15 degrees, and the AOA+35 degrees. By then, the speed sensors were working again, so all his instruments should have been working as well.

That's a good question, which brings me back to what the PF's midset was, and why he didn't react correctly to the stall warning in the last 2 1/2 minutes of the flight, even though the warning must have been sounding continuously. That should have been enough time to reconsider what he was doing, and try something different.

From the BEA news release:

"When the measured speeds are below 60 kt, the measured angle of attack values are considered invalid and are not taken into account by the systems. When they are below 30 kt, the speed values themselves are considered invalid."

Perhaps they consider the instrumentation to be unreliable at those low speeds? The lack of wind noise past the cockpit should have been a clue that they weren't making much headway.

Even if they didn't suppress the alarm when the speed dropped, would it have sounded when the AOA, which is the primary input, dropped to only 4 degrees, as it did near the top of their climb?

The amount of rubish posted on this site is just bewildering !
Some professional Bus drivers have posted over and over again what the recovering procedure is, was at the time ! What else do you need ?
Attitude and thrust ! Period !


Had the skipper been at the controls, this would never have happened and yes, it is a shocker to see a captain go to the bunk while the aircraft is toying with a TCZ. This is another no brainer and all this politically mumbo jumbo won't hold for very long.
BEA carefully chosen words in order to control the leaks is not going to change the fact that the next report will be absolutly shattering.
More than meet the eyes doesn't apply in this case but rather what you see is what you get. Plain, simple and brutal.

Torquemada60Don't worry Torquemada, AF is already "paying" and the pilots have already paid, with their lives. With AF, and its pilots, its a question of "company culture". We all know that...

But regarding the Report,
I must say, that I find the (3 pages) BEA report quite insufficient and vaguely accurate. Its quite tendentious, because it doesn't give all the relevant information. One has to read between the lines to figure out that a lot of relevant information was not aired, yet.

First of all, because it doesn't give us a clue (apart from a couple of phrases between the two co-pilots, that point to the general idea that they have lost valid indications and that they were in bed weather) of what was really happening in the cockpit during those 3 or 4 minutes:

- What kind of information was being "shown" on Pilot Flying's #2 PFD/ND (yes I know it is not registered but, are there any conversation clues(?), other than the ones selected by the BEA to be transcripted to the report). Was he first responding to an overspeed indication,(2h10m16s) and only after he has reached 37500ft, (2h10m51s) he has triggered TO/GA in response to another "Stall, Stall" warning?
- What was the role played by the 13º Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer (THS) plus the 4.9Ton of fuel stuck on the Trim Tank?
- What was the role of the "systems invalidations" design that below 60kts and 30kts, cancelled the "Stall, Stall" Automatic Call-Out Warning, and may have lead the pilots think they were out of it during precious seconds?
- We know that the Captain was able to reach the cockpit. It seems that by that time the speed read-outs were so low that the Stall Warning was out...but, what was his assumption of what was going on? By then, the aircraft was at about 35000ft, Pitch at about 15º and thrust 100%. Did he tell anything? Did he try to help? Didn't he notice the high pitch? Didn't he notice, the wings bouncing and the PF saying (only a minute after his entrance in the cockpit), that they were reaching FL100?
- Was the PNF so occupied, handling the ECAM, that he didn't notice the vertical speed rate, until FL100 was called off?

This report has a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of information gaps.

I think we should render the benefit of doubt to the crew, before crucifying them on the public arena. I do know its not "natural" to pull-up during a Stall, but I'd like to know more about what has really happened in that cockpit, before judging them.

Again, as to "Company Culture", as to why enter the thunderstorm, as to lack of formation, etc. I think we should get back to the times when, Safety was never compromised in lieu of commercial revenues, "Fuel Saving" programs, low cost tickets, passenger protection programs, etc.
Do you find any logical explanation to why is it possible to pay less for a two hour flight ticket, than for a 15 minute ride taxi? Well, millions of passengers do!

(Peter?) Garrison, could a full tail stall develop with severe icing build-up (combined with an aft CG)....It seems the pitot tubes iced up...the met conditions were highly abnormal...is it feasible that there was also a failure of the tail de-icing system? Although I have to agree with Torquemada60: the Capt should not have left the FD with the impending CBs ahead and they should have made a larger diversion (fuel margins notwithstanding)

Not So Simple ?
 

IMO there's too much over simplification going on here, I don't believe the pilots were incompetent - even 20 years after I last flew anything the recovery from a stall is ingrained. Hence:

(a) Are we sure that the nose up trim was added manually rather than automatically by the aircraft ?

(b) Why did the pilot keep pulling up when, with our near perfect knowledge, the opposite would have been more successful ? I'd suggest that the cockpit's displays had completely confused the sufficiently experienced crew and they were tracking a plausible (but wrong) hypothesis based on what they concluded from the displays.

(c) Perhaps there is something wrong with the Airbus assumption of how crews process data, particularly conflicting data combined with lots of visual and aural warnings, set against a system (=the plane) whose outputs depend upon which mode the system is in ?

(d) It would seem that the Airbus approach to automation works in 99.99% of the time and during that time is probably the most efficient and safe approach. However in the remaining 0.01% of the time a 'deep s***' mode is needed whereby only the basics are displayed & communicated. If these had included a height, an angle of attack and a (perhaps GPS calculated) speed, things would have become clear to the crew.

(e) How much height is needed to recover from an A330 near stall, stall and deep stall ?

Garrison

Your post is a fine starting point to unwind this accident. The downside, is that what you have written is well known, and to this moment, unaddressed.

How does one tell a Butterfly from a moth?

Could altitude and speed data from gps not be entered into the flight computers and compared to pitot static data with any major deviation between the the two setting off alarms? SLF here :=

From my perspective (psychology qualified) the statement by the PF of "no valid indications" is significant. It strongly implies to me that he was sufficiently disoriented by invalid readings from SOME instruments to become incapable of distinguishing whether he had any useful information in front of him at all.

This reaction that 'it has all gone haywire' is lethal because it undermines the best (and often only) means you have to regain situational awareness, which is to work the data. This has been true since the days of doped fabric, and has led to a consistent litany of stalls and CFIT.

Complex modal fbw systems add the peculiar complication that the aircraft itself can, in a manner of speaking, lose situational awareness itself. Of course this is purely algorithmic, but can lead to 'assisting' the pilot in a task at odds with his actual intentions, or inhibiting a warning as a false alarm, despite the fact that given the current flight phase and circumstances such a warning is probably urgently appropriate.

That said, it looks like plain dumbness rather than a side-effect of complexity when a stall warning seems to activate whilst approaching stall but then to quit in full stall, only to trigger again upon attempted recovery.

stall warning
 

The ancient Greek.

The stall warning discontinued when the speed was BELOW 60 Kts. How in blazes do you fly a large jet at 35000 ft at a speed of 60 Kts ?? At that height the speed has to be above 270 Kts. The stall warning is of no use to the pilot below 60 Kts when your plane should be at 272 Kts IAS at 35,000 ft, and 0.80 mach speed. The normal speed was 0.82 M and they slowed to 0.80 because of the turbulence. Flying into CBs close to the "coffin corner" is nuts. Remember too that the 'plane rose to 38,000 ft which meant they had no room for error.

There are all sorts of possibilities, including an unreported (by ACARS) tail deice failure, but a good Occamite would say that what we have here is sufficient unto itself. The vulnerability of the Thales pitots was known in advance; and the proneness of flight crews to become utterly confused and to do seemingly insane things when confronted with inconsistent airspeed/attitude information and uncertainty about systems behavior is well known from previous incidents, notably ones involving pitot icing. So even the fragmentary information we now have is not inconsistent with history (though it seems to be inconsistent with what a lot of pilots think they would have done if they had been there) and shouldn't astonish us. What would be astonishing is if there is no rethinking of pilot/flight data interfaces, especially with regard to AoA, after this -- though once the dust settles this, like previous crew-befuddlement accidents, will probably come to seem more and more like a freak outlier and less and less like a call for systems improvement.

Exactly so. The failure of complex systems used to be less emergent than recently. I remember flicking instruments with my index finger, long after I could have expected a result.

This will more than likely be an easily reducible stream of data leading to insufficient flying speed, and no readily available method to increase it.

Is there an Unreliable AoA in the FCOM ? Will there be?

You are rushing to judgement, prior to the release of the final report. Don't let the media spin on things warp your views of what really happened. Nothing so far says that the crew was poorly trained. You have simply made that assumption. There are too many inconsistencies in the report to understand what was going on, what the crew saw, and why they reacted the way they did.

As far as the captain going for his rest period, why do you see that as a problem? Flying across the equator through less-than-perfect weather is fairly common. The First Officer, who was presumably flying at the time, had more than twice the experience on that type of aircraft as the captain. The captain may have had full confidence in his abilities.

Now you are truly jumping to conclusions before the incident has been fully explained. Judge, jury, and now you want to assign punishment even though you don't understand what transpired and why. I hope you never get on a jury, as it doesn't appear you would be swayed by any evidence that didn't fit your fixed opinion.

Arrogance? Recklessness? Lack of professionalism? Don't be absurd.

Although it will undoubtedly be a very minor finding in the Final, in France it is considered tres gauche to question a man who is doing his job. I cannot say I have a problem with that. These were all eminently qualified men.

The critical speed is airspeed, not physical speed over the ground. Consider a simple case where there is a 200 knot tailwind. The result will be a 200 knot variance between the GPS and true airspeed, yet the aircraft would be perfectly happy in the air. No warning needed.

AoA
 

Garrison

Is it possible that the super cooled water that made the 3 different pitot tubes block with ice simultaneously, would also have prevented the AoA from moving thereby rendering it useless?
I don't think that some folks on this site realize the amount of chaos super cooled water can cause. At that altitude the air is so pure that the water cannot freeze. It needs some impurities for the ice to form. When this super cooled water came into contact with the aircraft it immediately turned to ice. It may also have formed on the nose and wings of the the 'plane making it heavier and changing the C of G.

crazy design
 

The autotrim and stall warning inhibit were lethal traps here.I love it when Airbus guys come on here and say its easy,just follow the procedure.The Airbus isnt so easy in non-normals is it?Its not really an intuitive a/c.How many different laws are there?Even an AIrbus guy didnt know all of them and had to be corrected.And this autotrim givesfull ANU in one LAW but a second later autotrim is no longer available because we're now in a new degraded law.And so the poor pilot who is used to autotrim is now stuck with full ANU trim.Hes got to second-guess what these Flight Computers are doing.In real time.And then the stall warning..on one minute,off the next even though the stalled condition hasnt changed.So when he did push down and the stall warning re-activated,he reacted instinctively and reversed his decision.My God,it would confuse the hell out of me too.And all of this going on in the middle of the night over the ocean with no tactile/visual feedback.No trim wheel.No control wheel.Just two sidesticks.The PF could be performing the direct opposite of the required recovery procedure and the PNF wouldnt be any the wiser.Myhat is off to you guys who fly this thing,itreally is.

Still,I expect they will still go with pilot error as probable cause.Technically,it was.But system design didnt help them any on this dark stormy night.

Basics
 

182 Flyer

Basics unfortunately have nothing to do with flying a jet at high altitude close to the "coffin corner" and then having supercooled water (ice) block all 3 pitot tubes simultaneously, build up on the wings increasing the weight and changing the C of G. This is a totally different kettle of fish. The way to prevent this type of incident is to stay away from CBs when close to the coffin corner. That's what they didn't seem to have done.

I note the report talks of 'nose up input'.

It may seem a daft question but what is the correlation between what the computer saw and what the pilot(s) joy sticks were doing? Are both the joy stick positions recorded?

Where are the Air Caraibes guys now?
 

Someone should find the Air Caraibes guys, interview them, and figure out why they were able to deal calmly and well with an issue that killed the AF guys; that should allow improvement of training.

Regarding the initial sudden climb:

"'The airplane’s pitch attitude increased progressively beyond 10 degrees and the plane started to climb. The PF made nose-down control inputs and alternately left and right roll inputs. The vertical speed, which had reached 7,000 ft/min, dropped to 700 ft/min and the roll varied between 12 degrees right and 10 degrees left. The speed displayed on the left side increased sharply to 215 kt (Mach 0.68). The airplane was then at an altitude of about 37,500 ft and the recorded angle of attack was around 4 degrees."

So obviously to some extent the aircraft was climbing despite the pilot's attempts to lower the nose. Keep in mind that with a whale of a plane like this, there is a lot of inertia. It is not a maneuverable fighter jet.
__________________

On the question of using GPS as a substitute for pitot tubes - here's why it isn't useful (apologies to the 98% of pilots who already know this), especially at 35,000 ft.

The behavior of an aircraft is determined by effective or INDICATED airspeed. How much air is flowing over the airfoils and controls.

An aircraft at 35,000 feet flying at 500 kts, may show an indicated (pitot) airspeed of about 260 kts (depends on temperature) - because the air is so thin. More importantly, it will BEHAVE as though it is only going 260 kts, because there are fewer air molecules to hold up the wings or have an effect on the control surfaces.

The "magic" of the pitot system is that it measures the EFFECTIVE airflow at any given altitude, thereby fairly accurately reflecting how the plane will handle as the air gets thinner. (At least up to the point where Mach effects kick in - getting close to the speed of sound introduces its own issues.)

A GPS cannot do this. It only reports how fast the plane is actually moving, which says nothing directly about how much airflow the pilot has to work with. In addition, it figures in wind effects, which also have no direct usefulness in controlling the plane.

Pop quiz:

You are at 35,000 feet. The GPS says you are traveling at 400 kts due north over the ground, decreasing at 1 kt per second. There is a 60-kt jet stream blowing from the southwest (217°). Your stall speed (no flaps) would be 167 kts INDICATED, but your airspeed indicator isn't working. Your heading is 356°. Barometric pressure is 29.75 (but your altimeter is set to 29.92 as in all flights above 18,000 feet.) The air outside is -42° C.

Tell me how close you are to a stall. (You have 10 seconds to calculate this).

Doesn't work.

The reason planes still use a 160-year-old instrument for airspeed is that it remains the best tool for the job.

If the IAS gets down to 60 Kts and the wheels are not on the ground then the aircraft must be very badly stalled. Disabling the stall warning makes no sense.
This is not a feature, it is a bloody stupid design error.

If the stall warning sounds all pilots are trained from PPL level to expect it to continue until the stall has been recovered. Stopping the horn while the aircraft is still stalled is dangerously misleading and IMHO is a major contributing factor in this accident.

According to the BEA report, the AOA was indicated at 4 degrees as they went over the top. Since this is the primary driver of the stall warning, the warning would likely have shut off, no matter what the speed was, and even if they didn't disable it a low speed.

Dumb, single engine piston instructor here.

It would appear that everyone agrees that erroneous data from Pitot/Static/AOA gauge was a (the?) significant causal factor here. So, assuming that is the case and also assuming that pilots will remain fallible, doesn't the multi-billion dollar air transport industry owe it to the numerous casualties of many accidents to sort the sensor issue once and for all? We have achieved so much in aviation but continue to rely on a small tube (or set of) and some pin holes to measure dynamic & static pressure.

One of the pilots explained to us the unusual warm temps, and coupled with instability in roll on the way up, and an AoA of 4 degrees over the ToC, which was probably in excess of Stall, there are some unaddressed concerns, possibilities?

Dairy guy here cows. Remember, a lack of respect for the Physics is only very occasionally punished with such an outcome as 447's plunge. The Bottom line is what you see in equipment is not the best, but the best, considering.

keep the greasy side down

For ST27:

Perhaps. The report definitely notes that when the PF lowered the nose a couple of other times, the silenced stall alert CAME ON again - and the PF STOPPED lowering the nose in response to the alarm (or at least, at the moment the alarm came on - cause and effect is strongly circumstantial).

If you do something, and someone or something starts yelling "No, no, no!" - it is basic human nature to STOP doing whatever it was - even though it was the correct thing to do.

Shades of Buffalo - when the alarms went off, the FO "undid" the last thing she'd done before the alarm (raised the flaps she'd just lowered.)

The design of this alarm taught the AF PF in a very short period of time that "if you lower the nose, you will get yelled at. If you don't lower the nose, the alarm will stay quiet."

That is not good design.

Rananim, like very much your post but maybe you would like to correct it as a trim wheel is still available in the A330.

Basic Observations
 

Assume after the seat exchange, the PF noted the air temperature was higher than expected, thus stating his understanding they were thrust limited and therefore could not climb much higher in the warm air. This also seems to verify the previous weather discussions and ice formation at that altitude, related to this accident.

Much to discuss here. From ACARS messages, we believe the pitots iced over, causing airspeed disagreement resulting in disconnect of the AP and AT. The airplane responded to AP disconnect with a right roll, which the pilot tried to correct. Given that the pitots froze with the heaters on, the right roll could have been caused by asymmetric ice accumulation, wing fuel tank imbalance, or perhaps by the turbulence they were experiencing. From the text, it sounds like the first 2 stall warnings were brief in nature, and could have been false due to asymmetric ice on the AOA vain, or perhaps briefly induced by turbulent up draft. IAS was apparently 275kt prior to loss of airspeed on the left PFD. Assume the AT disconnect left the engines at the same power settings prior to disconnect. The PF realized the airspeeds had been lost, and that alternate law had been selected.

The PF response to the right roll is problematic. The nose-up component started a climb, which he already knew he did not have excess power for. We have no information that he increased power at this time. Why he pulled nose-up is a mystery. Maybe he thought the 2 brief stall warnings were false, maybe he wanted to try and climb above the icing or the turbulence. However he did not have reliable airspeed indication in these moments, to attempt this.

Control inputs at high altitude are exaggerated due to the thin air. Control inputs therefore have to be smooth, and a progressive pitch increase to 10 degrees and beyond would seem to indicate the PF understood this. Either nose-up control inputs caused the brief zoom climb, or perhaps an updraft bringing up warmer air contributed. What is sure is that by the time he reached 37,500 ft and the left airspeed returned, he only had 215kt, which was too low to sustain flight at that altitude. The left and right roll responses seem to indicate either the aircraft was near a stall, or the rolls were being caused by turbulence, and certainly the quick disappearance of the pitot ice condition indicated some passage from one air mass to another. However the aircraft got to this altitude with this low airspeed, it was now going to stall, no way around it.

When the 3rd stall warning occurred, the pilots pushed the throttles to TOGA (the correct move) and then continued to maintained nose-up inputs (bad move). This is inexplicable, and I can only think that maybe they fell back on training where they were taught to power out of a stall with minimum loss of altitude, which is training that has now been changed since this accident. For whatever reason, the continued nose-up inputs (or selecting TOGA perhaps?) caused the THS to trim to +13 degrees up. Then at some point alternate law 2 (abnormal alternate) must have been triggered, since the THS never moved down in response to later nose-down inputs. My thinking is that with the THS stuck at 13 degrees up angle, they were never going to recover the stall, unless they realized they were in abnormal alternate and had to manually trim the THS. Nothing from the BEA report seems to indicate they did this.

When the angle of attack exceeded 30 degrees, this may have been the point where abnormal alternate law (alternate 2) kicked in, so no auto trim of the THS after that.

I could go on, but I'll stop here. The great mystery for me is the persistent nose-up inputs. The later nose-down inputs might have worked if they had remembered to manually trim the THS. Too many holes in the Swiss cheese here.

It really amazes me that there are so many super god like pilots opining here, all with super hindsight acting as if the data released so far give them a crystal clear picture of all the cockpit indications in this tragic flight. I can bet my last dollar that if we are ever able to simulate all the chaos and mess that had happened on this cockpit and throw them at a super airbus ace caught unaware, the outcome would have been no different.

In another life as a checker, after completing the sim check of a super ace to a very high standards we used the remaining time to conduct some extra excercises on really unusual attitudes with combinations of other failures...the plane went belly up, ace or no ace. We repeated it twice, same results. 2 years later, another sim check and super ace asked for another go at that exercise...he managed to save the plane but barely. He admitted he thought long and hard about it coming out with all the possible solutions in his head before the session. He was truly humbled and conceded that there were combinations of failures that are almost impossible to handled when one is caught unaware with not much time on one's side.

So, sky gods hold your peace. Thank your lucky stars that it did not happened to you. Hope that the manufacturers come up with equipments without all those design flaws; get the designers to think like average sensible pilots, not anal retentive hardnose savants who think that handling an inflight emergency is as easy as having brainstorming piss up in some soothing sequestered karaoke joint.

Again, if PF had not made himself aware of Law change, and was functionally still in Normal, these inputs would not do harm. (Roll left, full aft stick).
Dropping a/p does not command degradation out of Normal Law. Could he have been that far behind? It takes AD disagrees to autoselect ALTLAW. So at what point were they aware of AD disagree , and how long after that before they acclimated there 'get'/'got' to new parameters?

My 0.02:

The pilots must have thought they were in an overspeed situation. Horns blaring, rate of descent 10000+ fpm, no reliable speed indication, dark night, in severe weather, stall warning suddenly went off after pitching the nose up for sometime and then coming back on after pitching the nose down...

It's a pity they got it wrong. When in confused state, one would try everything to save the situation. They must have thought stick aft at full thrust was working since the stall warning actually stopped blaring. The thing they couldn't resolve was why were they still descending at a rapid rate? That's when one of them pushed the stick forward, which unfortunately re-trigger the stall warning. So they pulled the stick back to silence the horn, and the action did silence it. And all the while, they didn't have a valid 'speedometer'...

Wonder what the r/h asi tape was reading. Amazed it is not recorded. If it was very high it may explain the back stick inputs. However use of the QRH would of been useful. Too distracted to get it out I guess.

Back to Basics (2)
 

Oh yes, pmansion, I HAVE read that!

The first ND inputs were recorded between 02:10:05 and 02:10:51 -- the Captain re-entered the cockpit at 02:11:40.

The PF obviously wanted to bleed off some of the incredible VS of the airplane (and did so: 7000 to 700 ft./ min.). Why were they climbing so fast? I would say, because the PF inadvertendly induced a little nose up pitch, when correcting the right roll (02:10:05). Used to AP flying when at night and/or IMC it is not so easy to fly a clean straight line on instruments by hand. PLUS the startle of the AP+AThr disengage and the Wx-induced stress.

The stall warning in that phase must have been triggered by the erroneous airspeed breakdown. The pilots dealt with that by doing NOTHING (= nothing wrong). No need to.

Shortly before 02:10:51 they were nearly fine (but probably at their mental limits): 37500 fts and climbing with 700 fts/min with an AOA of 4° -- no trouble, but now speed down to around 215kts. That means stall and I think that is the moment when they lost the plane (first mentally, shortly after actually).

This time they didn't question the warning (by plausibility check), they simply followed procedures, they were behind their plane -- and flew into the deep stall. When the Captain entered the cockpit again; they were back down to 35000 and in the 'no-airspeed'-zone again.

Then, the second ND-input-phase (02:12:17), which could have changed everything. But, due to the lack of situational overview, at the next stall warning signal, they followed procedures again -- and threw their last chance away.

The PF said: 'Go ahead, You have control'. The wording is clearly NOT a confirmation, but a request: For me proof of the PF giving up. The procedure he (and two other pilots too!) were trained for doesn't work out. The end is known.

And there I am again: Do we overtrain pilots, do we encourage them to stop thinking and only follow procedures? There will always at some time arise a situation, where there is no procedure to be followed, because the situation is new, where common (flying-) sense is necessary and MAY save lives.

And there's my point again: Back to Basics!

From the report:

"2 h 10 min 05 , the autopilot then auto-thrust disengaged and the PF said "I have the controls"."

"At 2 h 10 min 16, the PNF said "so, we’ve lost the speeds" then "alternate law […]"."

So the PF should have been aware of the change within seconds.

There is no indication in the report of any other input recognized by the PF, other than putting the nose down as the stall warning sounded the first times.

It's not clear that the stall warning stopped as they descended. All the report says is that it started up again as the speed increased, not that it later shut off. We will have to see the final report to see for sure.

The ASI only were out for a matter of 60 seconds, according to the report, so they had valid indications for the last 2 1/2 minutes of flight, though they may not have recognized it or trusted it.

'Human error' makes SLF feel better/safe
 

From SLF perspective it would be so much easier to swallow 'human error' as sole/major factor. That means when one flies over the ocean in the dark we can reassure ourselves with the thought that the pilots of this plane won't make the same mistake because... they're smarter/more experienced/not arrogant/not French/will have learned from AF447....

But reading all these posts two things stand out for me:

- Yes, clearly this accident COULD have been avoided, if the right action had been taken BUT who is to say any of you pilots would do the right thing?

- If the stall warning is (a) intermittent and (b) alarming when you do the right thing and silent when you do the wrong thing, it is human nature to be confused - question your actions, especially under stress.

That combined with the statements in this discussion by professional pilots that express arrogance, defensiveness, fear/"there but for..."/lack of trust in aircraft/technology... makes this SLF question the very people in the front seat who we depend on to get us there safely; the training provided by airlines and modern cockpit design.

Not a happy place to be :ugh:

As I read the report, it appears that the stall warnings were as a result of him pulling the nose up, not what caused him to the pull-up

Could he have felt the floor fall out from under him as a result of turbulence, and as a reflex reaction thought he needed to pull the nose up to maintain altitude?