It is most definitely pilot error that one was trying to pitch the nose up and the other down. They were failing. The plane was recoverable.
Now y’all have me thinking almost every flight will end terribly, with catastrophic technical/error problems.
(As a side note, I often marvel at how every car I drive past is staying in its lane and not veering across the center line and plowing into four cars, three families’ worth of pedestrians, and a dog.)
From Destination Tokyo:
‘You see Tommy, there’s always one of two things about a submarine. In the first place, either the enemy finds you or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t find you, there’s nothing to worry about. But if he does, there is still one of two things: Either he drops a depth charge or he don’t. If he doesn’t, there’s nothing to worry about. If he does, then there’s still one of two things. Either he drops it close to you or far away. If he drops them far away, it’s foolish to worry. If he drops them near you, then there is still one of two things to worry about… If your pressure hull holds. Of course, if it holds, wouldn’t it be foolish to worry? If it doesn’t, you won’t be able to worry, so why worry?’
‘Are you through?’
‘Yes.’
You might be able to assign the same Boolean logic to aircraft. 
The National Safety Council compiled an odds-of-dying table for 2008, which further illustrates the relative risks of flying and driving safety. It calculated the odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident to be 1 in 98 for a lifetime. For air and space transport (including air taxis and private flights), the odds were 1 in 7,178 for a lifetime, according to the table.
ISTM that on one hand, airplanes have a whole “team” on the job. From the mechanics to Air Traffic Controllers to flight crews to flight attendants etc. there are lots of people working it. And they have excellent equipment, the latest studies, all that.
In contrast, look at some of the idiot drivers out there in marginal equipment making no adjustments for conditions.
What if planes were more affordable? Scary to think of some people flying, but here’s your modified Ford Pinto:
On September 11, 1973, during a test flight at Camarillo, the right wing strut again detached from the Pinto. With Janisse not available for this test flight, Mizar creator Smolinski was at the controls. Although some reports say the Pinto separated from the airframe, air traffic controller Reed Weske who was watching through binoculars said the aircraft disintegrated after taking off and making a right turn.[6] According to Janisse, the wing folded because the pilot tried to turn the aircraft when the wing strut support failed. Smolinski and the Vice President of AVE, Harold Blake, were killed in the resulting crash.[6][7]
I like sitting where I can see if the pilots remembered to extend the flaps before takeoff, like Delta 1141 or Northwest 255. I figure if I start screaming “flaps! flaps!” early enough it might make a difference.
If they had retracted slats, they probably could have got out of it.
Trouble was, OEI procedures said to leave the slats out, The crew had no indication that one set was out and one retracted. which led to the left wing stalling.
That can’t be right.
It makes sense. The USA has about 2.4 million deaths from all causes every year, of which, right now, 38,000 are traffic fatalities. That’s actually MORE than 1 in 98.
I know 1 in 98 sounds really high, but it’s really not, if you think about it. I know more than one person who’s died in a traffic mishap. Everyone does. As the old Onion joke goes, the world’s death rate is still 100% and you have to die of SOMETHING. The vast majority of people die of one disease or another, but of those that don’t, what accidental death is likelier than car wrecks?
Even in the USA motor vehicle deaths are more common than gun deaths, and they used to be WAY more common, but cars are much, much safer than they used to be.
I recall reading of some incident where a jet took off from a major airport somewhere and all the engines failed almost immediately, apparently due to flying through a flock of geese. The pilot somehow managed to maintain control and ditch in a nearby river, where the passengers stood on the wings trying to thumb a ride from a passing boat. I think the story was on page 11, right before the editorial page, otherwise I would have missed it.
Some years before that, on an unrelated note, there was a flight that ended up in a swamp in Florida due to pilot error. The story I read went into detail about a psychological effect related to attention focus: the pilot noticed an indicator light that seemed to be misbehaving, which caused the crew to become so fixated on getting this light to work correctly that they completely ignored the ground proximity alerts (or expressed annoyance at those klaxons distracting them from the vital task of making the indicator work right). Flight crew error is something that can be greatly minimized, but it cannot be eliminated.
I saw the documentary* based on that. The dead pilot haunted other aircraft.
*I know it wasn’t
Then there was that other documentary where a billionaire launches himself to Mars, and crashes in the swamps during Hurricane Katrina after having been infected by an alien organism.
Ah yes, the ghost of Bob Loft, captain of Eastern 401. That was actually an oft-reported ghost sighting among Eastern employees for years. The crew was so preoccupied with a problem with a landing gear indication light that they disengaged the autopilot and let the plane crash.
A nearly identical crash happened a few years earlier when Scandinavian 933 went right into the Pacific while the crew dicked around with other stuff.
In addition to Mayday and Seconds from Disaster, people interested in the topic of this thread may also like the TheFlightChannel Facebook group that has many video analyses of airplane crashes.
The pitot tube icing was already a known problem on the A330, and Airbus had already issued a recall prior to AF447, but that particular plane hadn’t had them replaced yet. Other pilots had experienced the same failure, and they didn’t crash. Even though they didn’t have reliable airspeed data, they knew that they were flying at a safe airspeed before the sensor failed. They simply had to maintain the same angle of attack and same throttle setting to maintain that speed.
You’re probably thinking of Eastern Airlines flight 401. I actually just recently watched pilot and Youtuber Mentour Pilot’s explanation of that crash. According to the video the ground proximity warning system wasn’t yet mandatory in 1972, so the pilots had no warning that they were too close to the ground.
Thanks, I’ll check it out. 
I was watching an episode in which an Air Alaska flight crashed because they (the airline) had extended their maintenance schedule to improve profits by getting planes in the air more quickly. Well, shit, I’ve flown Air Alaska! video
I think “time pressure” should be a cause. In one episode, they were saying that a NY airport was pressured into receiving more flights, despite the terrible weather. And in another video, pilots knew that if they were delayed too long it would be a problem because of the number of hours they could fly—the pilots would be delayed a day, I think. Geez!
Trivia question (because why not?):
American explorer Richard Byrd and three companions make the first flight over the South Pole, flying from their base on the Ross Ice Shelf to the pole and back in 18 hours and 41 minutes.
What year was it?
A) 1929
B) 1939
C) 1949
D) 1959
A-1929
Yet they did have an altimeter they could have looked at.
I thought that too. I just found a site that says it’s 1 in 107. So pretty much the same. If I had a raffle ticket to win a gazillion dollars and knew that only 98 (or 107) were sold, I’d think I’d have a snowball’s chance to win.
But to hear that I have the same chance to die in a car crash? That seems way too possible.
It’s worth noting that vehicle crashes are by no means strictly random events. As driver, you have a lot to say about your crash probability.
With good tires, good habits and avoidance of known risk factors (e.g. excessive speed, drink driving) you can probably reduce your chance of dying in a crash to less than 25% of the average.
Mentour Pilot on YouTube has a great series con accident investigations. He stresses how each accident is a learning opportunity.
Reduce, probably right. But I have passed too many people who are clearly texting etc. You aren’t the only driver on the road. I expect the hurdles to becoming a jet pilot ferret those things out to a huge degree. It’s just my hunch, but people driving on the road are playing chess. Pilots are playing 3-D chess.