Explaining how flight crews mishandle aerodynamic stalls is a tough job in no small part because it must be admitted from the outset that the skills needed to survive stalls are rudimentary, taught from the beginning of flight training. With that fact given, how does one explain repeated events, often fatal, in which highly experienced crews fail to perform this most basic maneuver?
Well before the recovery of the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from Air France Flight 447, the Airbus A330 that two years ago crashed in the South Atlantic, the industry was taking note of numerous accidents and incidents in which an aircraft stalled and its crew mishandled the event. With FDR/CVR data showing that AF447 was a flyable aircraft in a stalled state, nose-high, falling all the way to the ocean from 38,000 ft in just 3 1/2 minutes, the need is even more pronounced for redoubled industry efforts to fix training flaws that have allowed these things to happen.
Those w…
