Re: Imbecile design
yep, by the designers.........
Normally you'd go nose-down to pick up airspeed, therefore undoing the stall.
However the First Officer for some reason went nose UP (which stalls the plane even more) BUT the stall warning always stopped when he did so. So he thought that was problem solved. Being night, over water, no visual clues to where they really were or that they were rapidly descending.
Reason for more-stall turning off the stall warning? sharply nose up, the pitot tubes were not getting enough airflow to KNOW the airspeed was too low, and the software was written to assume it was adequate unless told otherwise.
AF447 was an Airbus. They've been know to try and prevent pilots from landing, on ground proximity grounds.
Another neat trick on early heads-up displays was, air speed and altitude shared a display window -- under pressure a pilot might assume it was showing the one, when he needed to know the other, but had not pushed the change-display button hard enough. Old analog days they'd be separate dials and he'd know from the position on the dash which was which. I think they've changed this one.