Flight Recorder for Air France 447 found intact [Update]

[Thanas]

Short version - the outer frame/chassis for the flight recorder was found, but not the data module. link

Search teams say they have discovered part of a flight recorder from the Air France plane that crashed in 2009, off the coast of Brazil.

But they say they have yet to find the section containing crucial data which could reveal the cause of the crash.

The Air France Airbus plane went down in the Atlantic on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board.

The recorder section was recovered a day after a salvage ship began working to retrieve bodies.

"During the first dive by the Remora 6000 which lasted more than 12 hours, the chassis of the flight data recorder was found, without the module protecting and containing the data," France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis said in a statement.

They said a second dive was under way.

A spokeswoman for the bureau explained that though only the outer chassis of the flight recorder had been found, the flight data recorder itself, if recovered, could still be in a condition to be read.

"The memory module is like a sarcophagus - the information is very well protected," she told Reuters.

Investigators and Airbus stress that without the "black box" flight recorder, the mystery of the plane's last moments may never be solved.

The wreckage of the flight was found on a fourth attempt, using robots capable of operating 4,000m (13,120ft) below the ocean's surface.

Those who died on the Paris-bound Air France jet, which came down hours after it took off from Rio de Janeiro came from more than 30 countries, though most were French, Brazilian or German.

Here's hoping the data can be found and retrieved.

[Hawkwings]

It's amazing that they have found even part of what they were looking for. However, I am curious as to how exactly the data storage part got separated from the rest of the box. I was under the impression that the entire unit was basically a super tough sealed cask, with squishy bits inside. Apparently it's super-tough storage inside a less tough box?

[Broomstick]

Correct, the data unit itself is the toughest part of the unit, and designed to survive even if the rest of the framework around it is crushed/burned/melted/whatever. As the power and recording accessories don't need to survive post-crash it is entirely possible for them to be destroyed or separated from the data unit without destroying the data.

Apparently, this time the data storage and the rest of the box separated from each other. That does happen sometimes. If they can find the data unit the odds are quite favorable they'll be able to retrieve information from it, though no investigator would guarantee that until they actually get the data out.

[Broomstick]

MEMORY UNIT FOUND

It was located today and has already been retrieved and brought to the surface.

CNN - BBC - Le Monde

[Hawkwings]

Truly amazing. Let's hope that the data can tell us more about just what happened on that flight.

[Broomstick]

And now the French have announced that they've found and retrieved the cockpit voice recorder memory as well.

[Broomstick]

A very long article on the New York Times on Flight 447 and the search for it, too long to quote, hence the link.

It may be a bit of a necro, but if they get results on the data recorders by the end of the month I'll probably post it here rather than start a new thread.

[Broomstick]

The black box data is intact!

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders did their job - the data is intact and recoverable. All the flight data, and the final two hours of cockpit voice. It will take some time to analyze it all, probably a couple months if things move as they usually do, but it's not unlikely we'll get dribs and drabs before a final report.

Here's hoping there are some answers in the data.

CNN, BBC, Le Monde

[Broomstick]

Could a mod possibly update the subject line to "Air France 447 Black Boxes Found Intact" if that's not too much trouble? It would be a bit more accurate.

The usual disclaimer: I am not a professional accident investigator, nor do I fly airliners. My aviation knowledge is limited and it is possilbe that someone who knows more than I do may come along an correct me. Speculation may change based upon new information. That said....

I compose this post with a heavy heart, as this one strikes me as pretty horrible from the standpoint of those who went through it. The main source document I used was Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses pour la securite de l'aviation civile, English translation.

The relevant series of events seems to be as follows:

From 2 hours 10 minutes 05 seconds: the autopilot then auto-thrust disengaged and the PF said "I have the controls".

When the autopilot and auto-thrust disengaged this is exactly what is supposed to happen – the pilot flying the plane (PF=”pilot flying”) takes over and announces “I have the controls”. This alerts everyone else in the cockpit that something is up and someone actually is flying the airplane.

The airplane began to roll to the right and the PF made a left nose-up input. The stall warning sounded twice in a row. The recorded parameters show a sharp fall from about 275 kt to 60 kt in the speed displayed on the left primary flight display (PFD), then a few moments later in the speed displayed on the integrated standby instrument system (ISIS).
Note 1: Only the speeds displayed on the left PFD and the ISIS are recorded on the FDR; the speed displayed on the right side is not recorded.
Note 2: Autopilot and auto-thrust remained disengaged for the rest of the flight.

I'm assuming the left input was to control the roll to the right. The nose-up seems odd to me, but the fact this was at night, in turbulence, might mean the PF wasn't fully cognizant of the total situation.

The rapid fall off in airspeed is not a good sign, and certainly not to that degree. There is the possibility that the pilots were getting conflicting airspeed reports from the instruments, which is horrible because then they don't know which airspeed is correct and which ones aren't.

Having the stall warning go off is bad enough... having it do so twice is getting really serious, especially combined with rapidly falling airspeed.

At 2 hours 10 minuntes 16 seconds, the PNF said "so, we’ve lost the speeds" then "alternate law […]".

Note 1: The angle of attack is the angle between the airflow and longitudinal axis of the airplane. This information is not presented to pilots.
Note 2 : In alternate or direct law, the angle-of-attack protections are no longer available but a stall warning is triggered when the greatest of the valid angle-of-attack values exceeds a certain threshold.

This time stamp is what makes investigators think the pilots had conflicting airspeed displays – they didn't know which one was correct so essentially they didn't know how fast the airplane was flying. The stall warning is connected to an angle-of-attack detector, so it was going off despite the lack of accurate airspeed.

The airplane’s pitch attitude increased progressively beyond 10 degrees and the plane started to climb. The PF made nose-down control inputs and alternately left and right roll inputs. The vertical speed, which had reached 7,000 ft/min, dropped to 700 ft/min and the roll varied between 12 degrees right and 10 degrees left. The speed displayed on the left side increased sharply to 215 kt (Mach 0.68). The airplane was then at an altitude of about 37,500 ft and the recorded angle of attack was around 4 degrees.

OK, the airplane is nose up, so it's trading airspeed for altitude, which only works for a very limited time. The PF correctly made nose-down inputs but I haven't a clue why he was doing left and right roll inputs from what's given here. I am guessing this was done to counteract the tendency of airplanes to “wobble” at extremely low airspeeds/near stall conditions, or perhaps in reaction to turbulence, or both. The airspeed went back up, which is good because that's further from a stall, and the angle-of-attack diminished, which is good for the same reason.

At 2 hours 10 minutes 51 seconds: the stall warning was triggered again. The thrust levers were positioned in the TO/GA detent and the PF maintained nose-up inputs. The recorded angle of attack, of around 6 degrees at the triggering of the stall warning, continued to increase. The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) passed from 3 to 13 degrees nose-up in about 1 minute and remained in the latter position until the end of the flight.

This is where it gets puzzling to me. The stall warning goes off again, but nose-up inputs are maintained? That's the opposite of what one normally does in a stall. Now, there are some rare exceptions to that rule, but they're rare. Or perhaps the PF panicked. Pilots don't like to admit to panic, but it does happen. Again, though, it's rare – people prone to panic tend to be eliminated from flying early.

Around fifteen seconds later, the speed displayed on the ISIS increased sharply towards 185 kt; it was then consistent with the other recorded speed. The PF continued to make nose-up inputs. The airplane’s altitude reached its maximum of about 38,000 ft, its pitch attitude and angle of attack being 16 degrees.
Note: The inconsistency between the speeds displayed on the left side and on the ISIS lasted a little less than one minute.

OK, the instruments themselves apparently recorded dissimilar airspeeds. That makes flying a lot harder. However, the stall warnings going off and the changes in altitude should have clued the pilots in to the idea you guys are getting very close to a stall.

At around 2 hours 11 minutes 40 seconds: the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped.

Note: When the measured speeds are below 60 kt, the measured angle of attack values are considered invalid and are not taken into account by the systems. When they are below 30 kt, the speed values themselves are considered invalid.

OK, this sounds like the instrument readings were so off from normal the warning system shut down. On the other hand, there would have been other indications that there were Serious Problems, like what the altimeter was doing. Some airplanes have a particular “feel” prior to a stall, a sort of wallowing, not-responding-well-to-steering sort of feel. I don't know how much that would apply to this model of Airbus, but if that applied that could be another warning that Something Is Seriously Wrong.

The altitude was then about 35,000 ft, the angle of attack exceeded 40 degrees and the vertical speed was about -10,000 ft/min. The airplane’s pitch attitude did not exceed 15 degrees and the engines’ N1’s were close to 100%. The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees. The PF made an input on the sidestick to the left and nose-up stops, which lasted about 30 seconds.

This is where they lost it (in my opinion). A forty degree angle-of-attack? That's insane for the circumstances. They were descending at 10,000 feet per minute. That can only be described as falling, it's not flying. Roll oscillations of 40 degrees? The passengers had to be screaming, there was no way in hell they didn't notice that. Why such rolling motion? They were stalled. The ailerons work poorly, if at all, in a stall and the airplane tends to want to roll. The only thing to counteract that is the rudder, the control surfaces on the wings will do little if anything.

What is can not understand is the sidestick left to the stops – that's using the aileron, not the rudder – and the nose-up to the stops. WTF? You are in a stall. Nose up can fucking kill you, and everyone aboard. What the hell?

At 2 hours 12 minutes 02 seconds, the PF said "I don’t have any more indications", and the PNF said "we have no valid indications". At that moment, the thrust levers were in the IDLE detent and the engines’ N1’s were at 55%. Around fifteen seconds later, the PF made pitch-down inputs. In the following moments, the angle of attack decreased, the speeds became valid again and the stall warning sounded again.

OK, it's bad when the instrumentation stops giving you information, I believe that's what the two pilots were saying. They had reduced power. Normally when near or in a stall you increase power, but there are valid reasons to decrease power, specifically when you think increased power is aggravating the stalled condition. In my admittedly limited experience that's usually when you think you're either in a spin, or about to enter one, because engine power in a spin tends to make the spinning faster/more violent. I am guessing that's what these guys where afraid of.

At 2 hour 13 minutes 32 seconds: the PF said "we’re going to arrive at level one hundred". About fifteen seconds later, simultaneous inputs by both pilots on the sidesticks were recorded and the PF said "go ahead you have the controls".

“Level one hundred” is 10,000 feet. They had fallen over 3/4 of the way to the ground in just a couple minutes. Both pilots had to be afraid by this point, which is why I think both started using the controls. The PF yielded control to the other, but at this point I don't think it matters, or made a damn bit of difference. They don't have time or altitude to get out of this situation.

The angle of attack, when it was valid, always remained above 35 degrees.

The qualification of “when it was valid” on this is scary.

The recordings stopped at 2 h 14 min 28. The last recorded values were a vertical speed of -10,912 ft/min, a ground speed of 107 kt, pitch attitude of 16.2 degrees nose-up, roll angle of 5.3 degrees left and a magnetic heading of 270 degrees.

What this means is that they were still in the stall, still nose up although the wings were close to level. They weren't in a spin although at one point they might have been damn close to one, and they were falling at 124 mph (200 kph) towards the ground.

What this means is that they were alive and concious all the way down, crew and passengers alike. Given some of the gyrations, it was horrible, frightening, and at times violent on the way down. Frankly, reading this gave me a real feeling of horror and fright. I am so glad I was not on that flight, it must have been horrific.

[Prannon]

Thanks for the interpretation Broom. I took a look at the BBC article on this and I had a look at the translation of the French report too, and it's really hard to grasp the finer points of this tragedy without an aviation background to reflect on. What's interesting to me is that the pilots continued to speak in professional terms even to the point where they new it was over. That must be the training and the professionalism that Air France was extolling, even though the more I read the report, the more it looks like pilot error was what doomed the flight (a layman might think that the pilots are hardly praiseworthy if it's their fault.) Although given that their instruments were not working, pilot error is completely understandable.

[Serafina]

Looks to me like the pilots got conflicting data from the instruments and acted on the wrong one. They did exactly the thing they were supposed to do in the situation they THOUGHT they were in - they were just wrong.
A very understandable human error then, if i am correct.

[Broomstick]

I'm linking to a post on another message board written by a pilot who flies airplanes of that sort (though he flies Boeing, not Airbus, there is considerable overlap between them) and is thus more qualified than I am to discuss the problems of a deep stall in a large, swept-wing aircraft: link

He seems pretty certain it's not just pilot error here, it's also weather and airplane contributing. That means multiple factors would have to converge again before we see a repeat of such an accident, which I find reassuring on a certain level. The odds of such a convergence occurring again on any particular flight are quite low. Naturally, this doesn't rule out trying to find ways to better avoid such accidents. That's why Airbus is swapping out the original pitot tubes for a better design.

[Hawkwings]

This is indeed some scary stuff, especially for one who's going to be designing airplanes (hopefully, at some point in the future).

I do wonder though, what sort of instrumentation is there to indicate angle of attack? I mean, a simple weighted ball seems like a relatively foolproof way of determining the positioning of the plane.

[Broomstick]

I do wonder though, what sort of instrumentation is there to indicate angle of attack? I mean, a simple weighted ball seems like a relatively foolproof way of determining the positioning of the plane.

A weighted ball would be subjected to differing g-forces during flight and would not be a reliable indicator.

There are direct angle of attack indicators, though they're a little uncommon:


AoA kits for experimental aircraft

The Airbus does has an AoA sensor (actually, probably more than one given the SOP of redundancy) but that information is not directly available to the pilots.

The audible sound stall warning systems of small, single-engine Cessna and Pipers are crude AoA gauges - they don't depend on airspeed but angle of attack to trigger the sound. Having practiced some unconventional stall recovery I can testify they most certainly will go off at cruise airspeed or higher if you nonetheless manage to get your wings to exceed the AoA necessary to approach a stalled condition.

[Broomstick]

First of all, thanks to the mod who changed the thread subject, much appreciated.

Second, I wanted to return to a couple things in posts:

I took a look at the BBC article on this and I had a look at the translation of the French report too, and it's really hard to grasp the finer points of this tragedy without an aviation background to reflect on.

It's not easy to grasp the nuances – I went to several people I know on-line with professional experience in airliners, as well as an acquaintance in real life, in order to clarify my understanding which, as I keep saying, is neither expert nor complete in this instance. I do believe it is something explainable to the averge person, and understandable by the average person, but it's dealing with things the average person, and to an extent small-scale pilots such as myself, are not familiar with. Therefore, there are more wrong assumptions and ignorance of relevant facts. All correctable, but some effort needs to be made.

What's interesting to me is that the pilots continued to speak in professional terms even to the point where they new it was over. That must be the training and the professionalism that Air France was extolling, even though the more I read the report, the more it looks like pilot error was what doomed the flight (a layman might think that the pilots are hardly praiseworthy if it's their fault.)

Yes, pilots are trained to maintain an illusion of calm no matter how dire the situation. They don't feel calm inside, but their speaking voices tend to remain so. Purely training. Also, pilots are trained to keep trying no matter what the emergency, and the tendency is that if you have something to do you are much less inclined to panic or act erratically.

One of the things that impressed me, in a morbid sort of way, was that the wings were only 5 degrees from level when they hit the ocean. That did not happen by chance. An airplane like that, in a full stall, will gyrate from 30-40 degrees left bank to 30-40 degrees right back repeatedly, and potentially can roll entirely over (that has happened in prior airline accidents involving stalls). If they hit that close to wings level someone was still trying to fly the airplane right up until the moment of impact and frankly, he had to be pretty competant to do it that well.

That's an important point, I think – these weren't incompetent pilots. At least one of them was damn good. They never stopped trying even when it looked hopeless. That's the way pilots are supposed to act.

Although given that their instruments were not working, pilot error is completely understandable.

If you're flying on instruments, at night, in a thunderstorm then a Bad Thing due to instrument failure is mechanical failure and not pilot error. Pilots are only as good as the information they get. If they get bad information bad things happen no matter how good, competent, or on the ball the pilot is.

Also, as pointed out in the link to LSLGuy, if the on-board software lead to the airplane commanding full nose-up trim there was no way the pilots could have possibly overpowered that input from the cockpit. Not possible. If the nose-up condition was triggered by software then it's NOT pilot error but mechanical error that doomed the flight (with pilot error then moving to “contributing factor”) But that's something for real experts to decide, and might never be entirely resolved. The debate could go on forever.

Looks to me like the pilots got conflicting data from the instruments and acted on the wrong one. They did exactly the thing they were supposed to do in the situation they THOUGHT they were in - they were just wrong.
A very understandable human error then, if i am correct.

Correct. It's “human factors”.

The linked LSLGuy's post brings that up – the pilot flying might have been too focused on maintaining altitude, rather than watching the airspeed... which, if the airspeed inidcators are malfunctioning, isn't that hard to do.

Again, this will take some hefty analysis by people far more informed and experienced than I am to figure this one out. I really think the black box recovery, as expensive as it was, was worth it as this is complex and difficult event. While we now know definitively what kill the airplane and all aboard – it was a deep stall condition that was unrecoverable once established – we still need to determine how that situation came about, and whether or not there is anything reasonable to be done to prevent this ever happening again.

[Hawkwings]

Ahh, silly me, thinking about it for a second a weighted ball would give you orientation, not AoA. Quite different.

One of the criticisms of Airbus plane I've heard is that the computer does too many things automatically, outside of the pilot's control. This means that in unusual situations, the computer may do things that are counterproductive and the pilot may not even be aware of it happening, or able to counteract it.

When I talked to a guy that's flown both Boeing and Airbus planes commercially, he said that he would rather fly an Airbus in normal, day-to-day situations, but if an emergency situation occurred he'd rather be in the cockpit of a Boeing craft, as the pilot retains more complete control over the aircraft systems. There was an incident where the pressure sensor on the nosegear of an Airbus craft malfunctioned and returned a reading of no force. This prompted the computer to immediately spool up all the engines to max power. This was while the plane was sitting on the tarmac, so that didn't go so well.

At stall, and especially in a deep stall, there is no useful air flowing over the control surfaces so as a result, any pilot control inputs are nearly useless. The usual recovery method is to increase power and pitch down, but if the tail was computer-trimmed all the way up, then it may have kept the nose up no matter how far the pilot jammed the yoke forwards.

[Jaepheth]

Design question...

Couldn't they install 1 time use chemical rockets on the nose and tail to help rotate the aircraft during such stalls?

Or is the chance of this happening not worth the cost?

[Beowulf]

Ahh, silly me, thinking about it for a second a weighted ball would give you orientation, not AoA. Quite different.

Actually, it might not even give you that. Because the location of the weighted ball would depend on local accelerations, it could in fact say you're upside down when you're not (in an extreme case). Orientation is best described w/ a gyroscopically controlled instrument (such as the artificial horizon indicator).

At stall, and especially in a deep stall, there is no useful air flowing over the control surfaces so as a result, any pilot control inputs are nearly useless. The usual recovery method is to increase power and pitch down, but if the tail was computer-trimmed all the way up, then it may have kept the nose up no matter how far the pilot jammed the yoke forwards.

I know some aircraft, if they're completely stalled, may in fact not be capable of responding to pitch down commands, in which case the proper manuever is to pitch up to gain airflow over the surfaces, then pitch down again, using momentum to get through the zone where the aircraft won't responded to pitch down. I'm pretty sure no commercial jetliner has that particular idiosyncrasy though.

[Hawkwings]

Couldn't they install 1 time use chemical rockets on the nose and tail to help rotate the aircraft during such stalls?

Or is the chance of this happening not worth the cost?

Certainly possible, but such occurrences are so exceedingly rare that they'd never be used, and rockets would just be an extra piece of hardware that deteriorates and is quite dangerous just sitting there.

I know some aircraft, if they're completely stalled, may in fact not be capable of responding to pitch down commands, in which case the proper manuever is to pitch up to gain airflow over the surfaces, then pitch down again, using momentum to get through the zone where the aircraft won't responded to pitch down. I'm pretty sure no commercial jetliner has that particular idiosyncrasy though.

Interesting, I've never heard of this before. My quick mental visualization of the airflow tells me this shouldn't be the case, because the more you pitch up, the more useless turbulent air you get over the control surfaces. Do you happen to know what aircraft have this particular problem? I feel the need to do some research.

[Colonel Olrik]

Design question...

Couldn't they install 1 time use chemical rockets on the nose and tail to help rotate the aircraft during such stalls?

Or is the chance of this happening not worth the cost?

Yes they could. My company designed and tested an anti-stall rocket system on prototypes A400M. The system was not considered for the final design as the anti-stall characteristics of the airplane were improved and the system was considered unnecessary.

And yes, it's the extra cost and weight not being worth it factor.

[Hawkwings]

They do make recovery parachutes that are fitted in test aircraft and some production aircraft, which can be used to recover from a deep stall.

[Colonel Olrik]

At stall, and especially in a deep stall, there is no useful air flowing over the control surfaces so as a result, any pilot control inputs are nearly useless. The usual recovery method is to increase power and pitch down, but if the tail was computer-trimmed all the way up, then it may have kept the nose up no matter how far the pilot jammed the yoke forwards.

There's a huge difference between stall and deep stall. You are in stall when partial or total flow separation at the airfoils occurs, which means that you suddenly lose elevator force and the capability to generate it - the airplane starts falling. You also lose partial or total roll control, as the airelons require attached airflow to function. However, the air flow around the elevator remains normal, so you can control the pitch of the airplane and so pitch down. Pitching down increases the pressure on the up side of the airfoils, where flow separation occurred, and thus the air flow tends to become attached again.

In a deep stall, you have total flow separation at the airfoils and at the elevator. The aircraft has no pitch, roll, or elevator control anymore. You're really fucked unless you're really, really lucky. But basically, on a figher aircraft you can eject, on a commercial aircraft you're going down. If this is what happened happened with the Air France flight, there's nothing they could have done.

[Hawkwings]

Ah, thank you for correcting me. Your information brings another question though - how do they ensure that the elevator remains unstalled when the wings stall? I assume it's a combination of having an airfoil with better stall characteristics and the angle at which the horizontal stabilizer is attached to the fuselage.

I found an interesting video of a power-on stall in an Extra 300. The instructor keeps backpressure on the stick and the student is trying to level out the plane with the rudder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGL_T9Mhtb4

edit: And here's the instructor doing the demonstration of the same thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOPsQn2Mksg

[Colonel Olrik]

First of all, a correction to my post: by "The aircraft has no pitch, roll, or elevator control anymore" I meant to "write pitch, roll or yaw control". Obviously, pitch and elevator control are the same thing:
pitch - elevator controlled
roll: airelon controlled
yaw: rudder controlled

Ah, thank you for correcting me. Your information brings another question though - how do they ensure that the elevator remains unstalled when the wings stall? I assume it's a combination of having an airfoil with better stall characteristics and the angle at which the horizontal stabilizer is attached to the fuselage.

Elevators on a tail are not there to provide lift, only to change the centre of gravity and thus the angle of attack (pitch). Therefore, the airplane having a positive pitch means that the elevator has a negative pitch (the centre of gravity is designed to be beween the tail and the wings) and so it won't stall before the airfoils, which are at a positive pitch. This goes Kaboom in a deep stall, because the airflow of the tail is being disrupted by the wings.

Canard designed airplanes have the elevator before the wings. Then, the elevator can stall as a positive wing pitch is caused by a positive elevator pitch. Incidentally, this is an advantage of the Canard design, as the loss of lift at the elevator causes a pitch down so the airplane starts recovering from the stall instantly without pilot input.

[Broomstick]

Ahh, silly me, thinking about it for a second a weighted ball would give you orientation, not AoA. Quite different.

Actually, it might not even give you that. Because the location of the weighted ball would depend on local accelerations, it could in fact say you're upside down when you're not (in an extreme case). Orientation is best described w/ a gyroscopically controlled instrument (such as the artificial horizon indicator).

Well, OK, but don't take away my turn and bank indicator, m'kay? It's not perfect, but it's darn useful and far less likely to break down than either a glass cockpit or a vacuum-powered "steam gauge" artificial horizon.

(For those of you not entirely clear on that - a "turn and bank" indicator is exactly that - a weighted ball. It resides in something that look much like a carpenter's level, except the fluid-filled tube is curved, and it has that ball instead of a bubble in it.)

I will note, however, that said device does give erroneous information in certain circumstances. For example, in a spin it's pulled outward rather than indicating anything about your turn or bank due to centrifugal force. Spins are kind of weird - when I was doing them in the Cessna 150 it felt like my right elbow was in free fall and my left under a couple g's, with a g-force gradient going across my body. I hasten to add that was part of a training exercise and not an emergency, thus I had the luxury to catalog my physical responses instead of merely focusing on "How the hell do I get out of this before I get killed?"

This is also why I'm getting more than a little annoyed at what I keep seeing in the media that these folks weren't aware of what was going on, it was "gentle", or just "mild buffeting", or whatever. It can't be true, much as I would like it to be. I would much prefer the passengers were blissfully unaware of what was about to happen but I simply can't believe that. The airplanes I did advanced stall practice in (spins are considered a type of stall) are very docile compared to a swept wing airliner and, trust me, you WOULD notice a 40 degree bank. If that bank occurred in a coordinated turn you'd feel about 1.5 g's, which is often initially interpreted as a falling sensation by the body. It would be sufficient for the layperson to notice. If it's not coordinated, you'll feel like the floor just became a wall and anything not secured - including people - would roll around the place or even go flying. They were in a deep stall with "falling leaf" characteristics. What does that mean? You know how a falling leaf flutters to the ground? That's what France 447 did - but much faster and more violently than any settling maple or oak leaf. Again, as a training exercise I've deliberately done falling leaf stalls - but in fully aerobatic airplane with much tamer characteristics than an Airbus. Trust me - you would notice the maneuver.

I understand the desire to provide comfort to the families. I am still not pleased with such falsehoods. Aviation is not forgiving of falsehood.