Pulling the stick all the way back is the normal stall recovery procedure for an Airbus 330. That's totally different from standard piloting. With the flight control system in normal law, the control system protections will keep the angle of attack below a stall, and will increase throttle to get airspeed if necessary.
AF447 had ice-clogged pitot tubes, and the pilots lacked reliable altitude and airspeed info. Redundant sensors reported conflicting data. The flight control system dropped back to "direct mode", where the control stick (which is a little joystick-like lever) directly moved the control surfaces. In that mode, pulling back the stick stalls the airplane.
Hitting the pilot with a mode change like that in the middle of an emergency was part of what caused the disaster.
Re pulling the stick all the way back: Yes, that sounds weird, but that's what the manual says. [1], "A330/A340 FLIGHT CREW TRAINING MANUAL OPERATIONAL PHILOSOPHY -- FLIGHT CONTROLS" p. 15.
"High AOA protection is an aerodynamic protection: The PF will notice if the normal flight envelope is exceeded for any reason, because the autopitch trim will stop, the aircraft will sink to maintain its current AOA (alpha PROT, strong static stability), and a significant change in aircraft behavior will occur.
If the PF then pulls the sidestick full aft, a maximum AOA (approximately corresponding to CL Max) is commanded. ...
If the angle-of-attack still increases and reaches ALPHA Floor threshold, the A/THR triggers TOGA thrust and engages (unless in some cases of one engine-out)."
What this says is that, in normal law, pulling the stick all the way back will give you the maximum pitch currently allowed, and if the pitch is higher than that, the engines go to full power automatically. That's a stall recovery.
But AF447 didn't have good sensor data for airspeed. That disabled this automatic recovery capability. (There are alarms and displays when this happens.) With the control system unable to assist the pilot, pulling the stick all the way back was totally wrong. Also, the AF447 pilots thought they were in an overspeed condition, while in fact they were stalled.
(I'm not a pilot; I used to work for an aerospace company.)
It (the A/THR triggers TOGA thrust and engages) is not a stall recovery.
From Flying Training: "Stalling will occur whenever the critical angle of attack is exceeded, irrespective of airspeed. The only way to recover is to decrease the angle of attack (i.e. relax the back pressure and/or move the control column forward)."
This is referring to the aerodynamic stall, which is what caused AF447 to crash, not an engine stall.
I'm not an Airbus driver, but it's my understanding that normal law provides stall protection, and pulling the stick full aft will give you the highest angle of attack consistent with not stalling the aircraft. This is what is being discussed in the paragraphs you quote. It is, however, possible to stall the Airbus in alternate law, in exactly the same way as it happens in any other aircraft. AF447 was flying in alternate law.
In summary: increasing thrust is not what breaks the (aerodynamic) stall (but it is used to minimize height loss). Reducing AOA by pitching forward breaks the stall, and that is done on an Airbus by pushing forward on the sidestick.
Was going to say exactly this. Pilots do practice recovery training (with normal stall recovery as well as in adverse conditions), and I'm sure all of the pilots on board were aware (or at least should have been aware) of the correct procedure.
Airbuses are weird beasts though, and I have to say that as a pilot I find the normal stall recovery procedure to be completely counter intuitive. The compounding problems with the pitot tubes being iced over plus seeing St. Elmo's Fire due to improperly routing the aircraft directly into a thunderstorm certainly didn't help matters.
Perhaps what's happening is that Airbus realized in the aftermath of AF447 that the idea of "pull up, the airplane will do what's right to save you" wasn't a good one and changed their training materials. I don't know for sure as I'm not terribly familiar with Airbus. I do think that the whole input averaging is an awful idea though.
Hitting the pilot with a mode change like that in the middle of an emergency was part of what caused the disaster.
That's true, but mostly because the guy flying AF447 wasn't a "pilot", he didn't understand how to properly fly the aircraft. Like most Airbus pilots, he was a "system manager" and spent thousands of flight hours watching while the aircraft itself did most of the work. When the automation failed, he simply didn't know what to do to fly the plane by hand.
From what I've read (and I'm not a pilot either), the proper response to unreliable or conflicting airspeed data for the A330, when you're at high altitude (not trying to land or take off or anything like that) is simple. It's something like:
85% power, wings level, 5 degrees nose up pitch
It's not a stretch to ask a pilot to remember something simple like that. Even when stressed.
Of course, it is a stretch to ask airlines to either hire competent pilots, or at the least to periodically put pilots into stressful situations like that in the simulator. They won't do it because simulator time is too expensive. It's more cost effective for Air Chance to lose an occasional plane than to make sure they have competent and trained people in the cockpit.
You're tone is hash, but you're correct in pointing out that lack of basic flying skills was a factor in AF447.
Unusual Attitude Recovery [0] in suitable aircraft (L-39 jet trainer is somewhat common) has been made available to airline pilots.
They do make airline simulator sessions somewhat stressful for airline pilots. Capt. Robert "Hoot" Gibson called it "death by simulation" when he trained to fly the Space Shuttle. They still gave him a workout in the simulator to fly a Southwest 737.
AF447 had ice-clogged pitot tubes, and the pilots lacked reliable altitude and airspeed info. Redundant sensors reported conflicting data. The flight control system dropped back to "direct mode", where the control stick (which is a little joystick-like lever) directly moved the control surfaces. In that mode, pulling back the stick stalls the airplane.
Hitting the pilot with a mode change like that in the middle of an emergency was part of what caused the disaster.