Pilot error led to a stall, there was no way to regain any altitude quick enough. And there are much tougher airports to land at than SF, they can review pilot training for plane models new to personnel, but come on, you're still an experienced pilot, knowing your speed and stall threshold as well as angle is basic...
Right. That should be a fundamental skill for a pilot who has made it to that level of the profession, something that could almost be done in his sleep even on a less familiar aircraft. One of my sister's friends is a 737 pilot and he said you become so accustomed to what a proper glide slope looks like (approx. 3%) that for an experienced pilot it amounts to little more than confirming the runway is in the right part of the windscreen on approach.
As an aside, I got annoyed reading articles on the Daily Mail and other European news sites, because so many of the comments were that predictable, smarmy European criticism of anything perceived as American. In this case, the competition between Boeing and Airbus becomes a proxy for America vs. Europe, to them at least. "The Airbus will not allow a pilot to input an unsafe maneuver, it's so much safer and more sophisticated" blah blah blah. Yeah, that Air France A340 did not allow an unsafe maneuver did it? It did not allow one, all the way to not the surface of not the Atlantic Ocean in not a near nose dive. Bill Whittle, who is an aviation buff and pilot, had an interesting video on the difference in philosophy between Airbus and Boeing and how it does reflect different attitudes of their builders. Airbus believes the plane is smarter than the pilot and overrules him, whereas Boeing believes the pilot should have the latitude to put the plane outside of normal flight regimes if emergency situations require it.
