Air France crash

[WConley]

From what I have read elsewhere, high altitude stall recovery hasn't been part of normal airline crew training in the past.  It is a vastly different scenario from low-speed stall recovery, where getting the nose down and applying power is generally a good thing.

At high altitude cruise, it's much easier to bend the airframe or get into an overspeed situation with the "standard" procedure.  The engines aren't making as much thrust either, so you have to use a lot of altitude. 

It looks like new training procedures for high altitude stall recovery are being implemented as a result of this incident.

[Garyford]

Thanks for posting this.  Not to make light of a tragic situation but it is an interesting combination that could explain some of life's other failings:


1) the young pilot was already nervous, which the article states might have blanked out creative thinking. In retrospect on bad situations one might wonder "what were you thinking" when in fact, that part of the brain might be shut down.
 
2) some of the Controls don't give feedback, so the young pilot might have been unaware he was pulling back.  Apparently the human mind is capable of blanking out a stall alarm so he might have similarly blanked out the notion he was pulling back on the stick. Very frustrating to read that part, but the article partially explains it as a human defense mechanism.
 
3) the senior pilot wasn't communicated the joystick position. Assumption is he had no idea the stick was pulled back and would have immediately recognized the error with with minimum feedback.


A bit humbling to read

[ToddK]

As a bit of an aside issue, but something that should be of concern for every future air travelled. In an attempt to reduce the cost of training and secure enough pilots for expansion, airlines around the world are looking at cadet schemes where they take a person off the street, give them 250 hours in a simulator and then they are straight into the right hand seat of an airliner carrying passengers. It's already happening in some low cost carriers in our region, and some of the larger carriers, including the one I work for, are also looking into it. Scary stuff.