I know you are very experienced and an author. But on that same token of 30+ yrs experience and accident investigation work, keep in mind that experts in their own fields wrote that report which you say missed the mark (even if good). Those are multiple groups that investigated thoroughly AF447 and came up with their report. I'll be honest that I did not read the entire report, but I read many pages of it and I thought it was a great report.

I agree with you that our training regime needs to be changed to reflect the reality of today's environment of high automation, all glass cockpits, with very little hand flying in reality. That should require a full revamp of the tired old Proficiency Check standards. Also, we should have taught stalls from day 1 to be immediately nose down to reduce the AOA and add power. Instead of the BS I learned in 2007 at a regional (to be fair, all airlines back then) to power out of a stall by adding power, spoilers in, and ride the stick shaker. In the landing configuration that required slight back pressure. It was ridiculous. Now this has been fixed. Sims are also slowly being fully certified to represent a true deep stall in the high Flight Levels.

The difference also is that I know many of those involved on that investigation, including several on the HF group that wrote that report. I have discussed these things and they were not aware of some of the factors. I urge you to read the ENTIRE report. Also, the canned training, even improved, is far short of the mark. I am hoping and working to fix that. As I previously stated, while pilots are generally able to tell you what to expect if you tell them what failed, they are very poor at telling you what failed if you just provide the symptoms. I think that is a key factor.

The truth remains, they were weak. Or at the very least, unprepared. A component supplying critical fight data failed. With that went the aircraft's ability to adequately monitor & control itself. The flight crew, unable to "sort things out," rode her down 38,000 feet (16 degrees nose up) into the abyss. Aeroperu 603, hauntingly similar, something we've chewed over more than 20 years. Asiana 214, right into a sea wall, day VFR, due to, what do you even call that? These machines are, highly automated. They are not, fail safe. If you're saying we need to better incorporate training for descending the ladder of automation , fine, I agree. Fly the airplane, hard to argue with that.

No, that is, sadly, not "the truth". I wish it was, I'd feel a lot better and it would be an easier fix. I'm sorry that people don't want to let go of that idea but the evidence just does not support it. I will further tell you that to my knowledge (based on personal interactions) NONE of those that investigated this accident would share your view.

Will have to take your word for it. I can document numerous highly qualified & experienced professionals, on these pages, who don't share yours.

To be sure many would disagree, and that is why we have seen a plateau and lack of progress on reducing accidents the past several years. It is also why using methods such as MIT's STAMP to understand the factors is so important.

I suggest people read Dekker's "A Field Guide to Human Error" for a start. The other part, though, is that people do not know what they don't know, and hindsight bias and fundamental attribution error reign supreme with many.

I submit they did know. But for inability to shed a crippled FMS under extreme stress, couldn't get there soon enough. You worked in training, correct? Tell me you haven't observed crews in recurrent cling to flight director commands during stick shaker, unusual attitude or loss of situational awareness situations when they freely admit at de-brief they "knew" it couldn't help.

Came across a report from what I seem to recall was a Delta PI, many years ago. In it, he detailed using a raw data, hand flown, unfamiliar, non-precision IAP to minimums at a special airport (MGGT?) for both 757 & DC9 crews. As might be expected, while nearly all of the DC9 approaches resulted in a landing on the first attempt, a surprisingly high number of the 75 crews required another after going missed at some point. When Al Ueltschi traded his white cap at PAA for climbing the stairs to begin work at a characteristically Spartan hangar desk, making FlightSafety his legacy, he well understood the value in accurately & reliably prioritizing fundamentals of aircraft operations. Saved a lot of lives in the effort.

Agreed. Here is the challenge though: Most of us on here, especially if we were military trained on the T6/T44/T37 built the foundation of our training without automation. Law of primacy takes over and we can instinctly use basic pitch and power to fix the situation without the autopilot. In Europe and Asia, many of these Cadet programs train directly to automated/ glass cockpit airliners.

The solution is somewhere in between: without forgoing the basic hand flying pitch/power (and rudder) skills, address stalls and unusual situations in automation/ glass cockpits. One of the best demos I had while training on the king air involved my instructor having me put the autopilot into a left hand hold, had me close my eyes and when I opened them the airspeed was right above stall. Was I to instinctively add power and put it in a spin? Or was I to just relax the wings and lower the nose. We need these outside the box training scenarios perhaps building on accidents from the past. Perhaps 777 training should involve correcting a low airspeed/below glidepath situation going into SFO for example?

Been told of one operator having done just that. I know Boeing included stall recoveries from the landing configuration on coupled ILS approaches by disabling the A/T at low thrust. The maneuver, if satisfactory, ended with continuing to a landing on profile, combining events, which I didn't consider very realistic. Improved guidance on aerodynamic recoveries coming into its own of course after Colgan.

We need to do better.

One of the difficulties facing industry & accident investigators in particular, seems to me anyway, is pressure to produce big answers when the root cause of a big tragedy may reveal itself uncomfortably obvious or uncomplicated. As redundant & user friendly all the dreamy tech on new flight decks may be, it can and will fail somebody, somewhere, eventually.

Wait, ok, so...airplane is plummeting towards the ground, radar power, in the bars, still plummeting. We need to have a symposium to decide whether or not, you know, maybe they should be mildly criticized for not at least trying out lowering the nose? Is this for real? Is Alan Fundt hiding in the bushes?