But this isn't rocket science. It isn't even long division. Maintaining a safe angle of attack is the _most basic_ pilot skill there is. If you fly an airplane at all, this is something you have to think about both on approach and takeoff.
To me, it seems ridiculous that pilots are unable to remember this stuff. Really. To recover from a stall, you ease down on the stick and alternatively apply power. Barring a deep-stall condition, it's really that simple. They even teach you that the most basic error in a stall condition is to pull back on the stick in a panic-stricken attempt at forcing the plane to gain altitude. I'm stupefied at these reports.
Well, to be fair, flying a heavy is vastly different from a light plane. You don't have the seat-of-the-pants feel, centre-of-gravity varies greatly during the flight with fuel burn-off, at cruise you are flying only a few knots over the stall speed, and so on.
There were even situations where pushing forward was the wrong thing to do (although no longer, thank goodness). The 727 could enter a situation where the elevator itself was stalled from the main wing stall.
Modern heavies are about systems management and cockpit procedures. As someone below points out, if one system is telling you to pull up from overspeed, and another is telling you to push forward from stall, which do you believe? And, more importantly, how quickly can you trouble-shoot to find the correct action?
Although it is recorded as a pilot error to me it is a complete system failure that resulted in pilot error. Considering its a fairly modern plane the typically adhere to lights outs on systems functioning correctly. Then when they don't you have 2 pilots overwhelmed with a slew of whistles and bells going off simultaneously.
The systems were "reporting" alternating stall and overspeed warnings. So you have one system telling you to pull up to slow down and then another saying you are about to stall, the stall readings are invalid...the computer gives up and says you're on your own.
BTW, the AOA screen is not even visible, it's buried in a submenu of the main screen.
To me, it seems ridiculous that pilots are unable to remember this stuff. Really. To recover from a stall, you ease down on the stick and alternatively apply power. Barring a deep-stall condition, it's really that simple. They even teach you that the most basic error in a stall condition is to pull back on the stick in a panic-stricken attempt at forcing the plane to gain altitude. I'm stupefied at these reports.