<i>Hitting the pilot with a mode change like that in the middle of an emergency was part of what caused the disaster.</i><p>That&#x27;s true, but mostly because the guy flying AF447 wasn&#x27;t a &quot;pilot&quot;, he didn&#x27;t understand how to properly fly the aircraft. Like most Airbus pilots, he was a &quot;system manager&quot; and spent thousands of flight hours watching while the aircraft itself did most of the work. When the automation failed, he simply didn&#x27;t know what to do to fly the plane by hand.<p>From what I&#x27;ve read (and I&#x27;m not a pilot either), the proper response to unreliable or conflicting airspeed data for the A330, when you&#x27;re at high altitude (not trying to land or take off or anything like that) is simple. It&#x27;s something like:<p><pre><code>   85% power, wings level, 5 degrees nose up pitch
</code></pre>
It&#x27;s not a stretch to ask a pilot to remember something simple like that. Even when stressed.<p>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&#x27;t do it because simulator time is too expensive. It&#x27;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.