In the shuttle we had pitch attitude limits on the attitude indicator that could be used to maintain a safe airspeed if the airspeed indicator failed. It was called Theta Limits where theta is the Greek symbol for pitch attitude. Basically if the high pitch limit is flown for a bit, the shuttle would fly close to its minimum airspeed. If the low limit is flown, the shuttle would fly close to its maximum airspeed limit.Do airliners or other aircraft have pitch limits displayed on the pilot's attitude indicator? I don't think so. I have looked into a couple of airliner crashes where the root cause was loss of airspeed indicator in the cockpit. Maybe this very useful display should be used in aircraft so they can be flown safely if the airspeed indicator fails.Just my thought for the day.
Shuttle has a speedbreak and speedbreak setting is input to Theta Limits. Why is it impossible for an airliner Theta Limits to use throttle setting as an input?
Regardless of whether the indicator is marked as to these limits, all pilots are taught about this, and not just glider pilots. In the famous case of Air France flight 447, if they had stopped trying to chase the airspeed indicator and altimeter (which were indicating incorrectly due to icing) and flown a constant pitch, they would all be alive today. In fact, the Airbus flight computer would have done exactly this if they had not overridden it. But an under trained first officer who had no business being in that cockpit killed them all. This was a case of an aircraft with all engines operating properly where "flying the horizon" could have saved them.
Books have been written about this incident. My knowledge of Airbus cockpits comes from many hours in PC flight simulators. In my opnion, the big flaw was Air France's policy of taking zero-time job applicants and training them to fly the Airbus computer, rather than first teaching them how to fly.