Air France Black Box ResultsPilot Error

James Robinson writes:

The pilot of the Colgan Air flight approaching Buffalo did the same
thing, and some studies suggest that when surprised, the majority of
pilots will try to pull the nose up when they hear a stall warning, which
is exactly the wrong thing to do. Is it just human nature to pull back
on the controls, thinking you want to stay away from the ground, rather
than point the aircraft at the ground to recover?

Yes, I think so. The number of pilots who do this, even with long experience
and extensive training that is supposed to prevent them from doing it, implies
that it has some sort of instinctive component. Perhaps in much the same way
that a person will reach out to catch a falling coffee pot, even though he
knows very well that the coffee pot is extremely hot and will burn his hands
badly if he just grabs it.

Further, why did he never figure out that he was in a stall and take
appropriate action? Beyond the alarms, the lack of wind noise past the
cockpit should have been an obvious clue, yet only once did he try
putting the nose down, and only then for a short time.

Perhaps all the other alarms distracted him. Apparently a lot of things were
going wrong.

That said, there have been a number of other times on both Boeing and
Airbus aircraft where the pitots froze up in similar conditions, and the
pilots were easily able to maintain control without the need for
aggressive control inputs. Why was it different this time?

Sensory overload and no prior experience in the same type of situation,
perhaps.