(Sorry I didn't find a good way to get the URL to show as a URL instead of as the video itself; the URL would be wwwREMOVE.youtube.com/watch?v=2ei-qss0sPQ, remove the word REMOVE)
It is my understanding that one of the biggest questions is why the pilots totally ignored all the loud and continued stall warnings. Had they even just wondered whether the warnings were worth some credit and thus checked if they actually were in a stall, I don't think they might have concluded that they weren't in a stall.
Unlike many, I do not feel like quickly pointing my finger at the pilots and wonder how can anyone miss those warnings, how could they have panicked to the extent of ignoring those warnings, etc. Nobody who can clear a middle-school exam can be stupid enough not to care about such warnings, and I do not believe that 2 or 3 experienced, skilled, trained pilots can panic at the same time to the extent of ignoring those warnings for such long time.
I always thought they must have had
a reason - although a wrong one - for not even considering the possibility that the stall warnings were worth some credit during the whole descent.
The only clue I found about what that reason could be, is in this documentary:
shot shortly after the accident, where at 18:13 a French pilot representative of a pilots union clearly confirms that the Air France procedure instructs to respect the stall warnings while the Airbus procedure instructs to ignore the stall warnings.
Let's try for a moment not to mind his patronizing laughter and the weirdness of the idea that Airbus would manufacture a stall warning system and then instruct to ignore it (there are probably missing details, maybe the Airbus manual meant the warning should be ignored at high altitude, or something like that). If it's true that in such situation one procedure instructs to do one thing and the other procedure instructs to do the opposite thing, then wouldn't that matter
a lot ?