How poorly trained in basic airmanship were they and how were they allowed to be pilots? That's the blame component for AF.
Your response is very human, but also deeply irrational. In practical terms of safety it is irrelevant if the pilot is to blame or not or to what degree.
All we should want to do is analyze the reasons why the crash happened and adjust the aviation safety system such that it never happens again.
If pilot actions contributed, then we must ask why and how exactly, then fix those factors through better airplane design and pilot training.
Just blaming someone, then moving on may make you feel good inside, but does nothing to improve safety.
> This is flying 101.
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> How poorly trained in basic airmanship were they and how were they allowed to be pilots?
Thoughts like these about three experienced professional pilots should make you do at least a double take. It is far more likely that you're dead wrong than that those pilots were so incompetent they didn't even know the basics.
But IIRC, it happened by night, over the ocean. If the instruments fail you, this is really hard to “perceive” your speed and orientation.
Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Bravado and macho mindset are explicitly frowned upon in aviation for a reason.
Reminds me of "aviation experts" claiming Sulley didn't have to ditch in the Hudson at all, since some pilots in the simulator were later able to turn around and land back at the airport.
Sure they were! I'd be able to do so too, and I'm no pilot — I'm safe in a simulator, I already know I'm going to have a double engine failure x seconds after takeoff, and I get to try to land an infinite amount of times until I get it right. Easy peasy.
Things look a bit different when it's your ass in the seat and you lose both engines on a random takeoff.
They also look different when you're subjected to massive G forces, your plane isn't listening to your inputs, the computer is shouting erratic warnings at you, you're rapidly losing altitude, and your training didn't cover this scenario.
What about the Boeing crashes?
At no point in time would the correct response to a stall warning be to pull the nose up. This is something taught well before you enter the cockpit of a commercial airliner. If you continue to pitch the nose up excessively, you will stall the aircraft. This is also something you learn on day 2 or 3 of flight school.
If the first officer had done literally nothing at all, 228 people would be alive.
I also fault Airbus’s philosophy on countermanding inputs, though that warning is unambiguous and the pilots should have communicated about that. But when the damn “un-stallable” aircraft is yelling at you for putting the nose down, while also yelling at you for opposing inputs, you can’t not fault the plane.
Too many years as Quality Assurance grinds into you that when engineers claim perfection, you start questioning their assumptions, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down shortly thereafter.