There have been several experiments done for youtube videos where an untrained person is talked through a landing, sometimes without the benefit of ILS autoland. The latter is... not always successful.
I wonder if someone used to simpler aircraft might have done better at identifying the problem in AF447. Any pilot should know that given full power, an unknown airspeed, a nose-up attitude and a high descent rate that the airplane is probably in a stall.
That was part of the conclusion of the definitive piece of journalism about the crash: Air France had a habit of training pilots fresh up on a jumbo jet, accumulating the required flight hours in a certified simulator (the “company babies” referred to in the article). Part of the confusion was that under “normal law” (typical flight computer rules), that jet literally cannot stall due to pilot input. Thus they dismissed the stall warnings as erroneous because they assumed the flight data was unreliable in some way.
Indeed, once the more senior pilot (who flew light aircraft) was on the bridge, it didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on... and once he did his ability to think coherently broke down because he knew they were in a high speed stall and probably going to die any moment.
I wonder if someone used to simpler aircraft might have done better at identifying the problem in AF447. Any pilot should know that given full power, an unknown airspeed, a nose-up attitude and a high descent rate that the airplane is probably in a stall.