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Comment by brazzy | Hacker News Reader

>It's tempting to blame the inexperienced first officers, their training, or the CRM failures on this flight, but the blame for this crash has to land squarely on the atrociously bad UX of the Airbus cockpit.

Hard disagree. No matter how bad the UX, there just isn't any conceivable situation where Bonin's pulling up the rudder for minutes on end wasn't suicidally dangerous, or made any sense at all.

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Same sentiment heard elsewhere. Pulling stick up in a stall midflight is a rookie mistake. Pulling up & increasing thrust is a takeoff peculiarity. Even if AF447's altimeter was faulty, they both missed something else in their panic - they fell 20,000ft in few minutes, going faster & faster. The g-forces are palpable enough to experienced pilot (who reky on it sometimes when they fly in complete darkness).

This incident was rookie flying behavior coupled with a complete disregard of situational awareness. The flight UX of Airbus isn't that bad: 330 & 340 have a much better panel layout & less clutter than their Boeing counterparts from late 90s.

I have to agree with you. Even non-pilots who play video games have enough common sense not to do that: they notice that when they climb sharply they lose speed and eventually stall and that when they dive back down it gives them their speed back and allows them to recover.

His inexperience cannot be denied. Must have been terrifying for the pilot when the plane's safeties and automation suddenly disengaged. Uncertainty and panic must have seized him and never let go.

> Even non-pilots who play video games have enough common sense not to do that

But in video games you likely have good visibility and an external view. AF447 did neither. The human ear is actually really terrible from telling a pitch up stall condition from a pitch down overspeed one, lacking visual references.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation (somatogravic)

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