Originally Posted by
KC10 FATboy
I don't believe it is a poor design because the entire idea of FLCH is to pitch for speed. Had the autopilot been engaged, they never would have stalled. He put the airplane into a pitch for airspeed mode and didn't hold the required pitch. They also failed miserably at basic airmanship and CRM/TEM.
It's strange at the least with the hybrid design of the 777. It poses as a super modern airliner, but yet in more than a few modes than other super modern airliners will just let you go there. "Wake-up" is a stall protection that they are trained is there. 777 pilots in most arenas are trained to never turn the A/T off. The A/T column on the FMA was green and the saturated pilots assumed it was active I'm sure.
It was a combination of poor airmanship, poor systems management/awareness, poor energy management, and the strange no wake-up in FLCH sure didn't help matters.