This extract from an article posted here really does not put the aviation skills of the pilots in a good light, does it:NotoriousREV wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:29 amDon't forget, AF447 was a perfectly serviceable aircraft was flown into the sea due, partly, to the fact the FO just kept pulling full back on the stick whilst the stall warning went off for nearly a minute. I'm not a pilot, but even I know that there's not many situations where that's going to be the correct answer.
"A string of messages appeared on a screen in front of the pilots, giving crucial information on the status of the aircraft. All that was required was for one pilot (Pierre-Cédric Bonin) to maintain the flight path manually while the other (David Robert) diagnosed the problem.
But Bonin’s attempts to stabilize the aircraft had precisely the opposite effect. This was probably due to a combination of being startled and inexperienced at manually flying at altitude, and having reduced automatic protection. At higher altitudes, the safe flight envelope is much more restricted than at lower altitudes, which is why pilots rarely hand-fly there.
He attempted to correct a slight roll that occurred as the autopilot disconnected but over-corrected, causing the plane to roll sharply left and right several times as he moved his side stick from side to side. He also pulled back on the stick, causing the plane to climb steeply until it stalled and began to descend rapidly, almost in free-fall.
Neither Bonin nor Robert, nor the third crew member (Marc Dubois, the captain) who entered the cockpit 90 seconds into the episode, recognized that the aircraft had stalled despite multiple cues. In the confusion,
Bonin misinterpreted the situation as meaning that the plane was flying too fast and actually reduced the thrust and moved to apply the speedbrakes – the opposite of what was required to recover from the stall. Robert overruled him and attempted to take control, but Bonin continued to try and fly the plane. He and Robert made simultaneous and contradictory inputs, without realizing that they were doing so.
By the time the crew worked out what was going on, there was insufficient altitude left to recover, and AF447 crashed into the ocean, with the loss of all 228 passengers and crew."
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