I think the original author is drawing the wrong conclusion here. Sully may have had the stick all the way back, but that doesn't mean it was wrong. The lowest energy way to land is to try to prevent the aircraft from landing. So when you are in the flare, the technique is to pull back on the stick to keep the aircraft in the air a few feet above the runway, until you have no more elevator authority, and the aircraft will settle onto the runway with the least amount of energy. Exactly what you want in a off-field landing too.
As my glider instructor put it: those last few seconds before touchdown are the prime rib of flying. Keep pulling back on the stick and make it last.
In fact if you look at the Wikipedia article that the OP linked to it suggests that Sully was unhappy that the aircraft was not responding to his full back stick:
> However, Sullenberger said that these computer-imposed limits also prevented him from achieving the optimal landing flare for the ditching, which would have softened the impact.
My understanding is that transport-class aircraft (i.e. large passenger jets) are typically landed differently than smaller planes like a Cessna Skyhawk or a glider. In my brief flight training experience in a small plane, I was taught to stall the A/C just above the runway as you describe. However, I believe ATPs are taught to land at about 1.3x stall speed, then use the spoilers to dump the lift entirely and get full weight on the wheels in a very controlled way.
I'm of course discussing typical on-field operations, not emergency dead stick ditchings. I don't know how those are supposed to go, but one might imagine that going to full stall just before impact would indeed result in the minimum energy state. The trick is to not accidentally do that too high!
From what I read "the stick all the way back" is correct, because it's telling the computer your intent, "raise the nose of the plane". Airbus aircraft use flight laws to control the actual control surfaces, so there's no reason to make your intent less strong than it actually is.
Airbus airplanes have several different flight law modes (including direct law, which has no protections). So the biggest risk is probably that it switches laws and actually tries to carry out what you're doing.
If your car suddenly reduced your turning authority, and you wanted to turn urgently, you'd crank the wheel harder.
The French designed a plane which actively interferes with your authority _while_ you're trying to use it.
And if we're going to give them credit for saving USAir 1549, then we have to give them blame for Air France 447, for making a plane that _averages_ the inputs of the two pilots to arrive at an overall control output, without any real warning, allowing two pilots to split controls and perform controlled flight into the ocean.
You'd have to physically break through the jammed control mechanism to get to that point, otherwise, they're mechanically linked up to a certain amount of pressure.
Anyways, the point is, assigning blame in this way is petty and weird on the authors part.
> You'd have to physically break through the jammed control mechanism to get to that point, otherwise, they're mechanically linked up to a certain amount of pressure.
That's what I said.
Interestingly, the BEA pointed out that the dual input rate is the same on Airbuses and Boeings (cf. https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/F-GSQJ_finalreport_EN..., page 47). Lack of communication and stressful environment here too, maybe coupled commands would not have saved AF447 after all…
> Anyways, the point is, assigning blame in this way is petty and weird on the authors part.
I agree, but you're doing the same thing as the author of the article: taking the fact that the captain pulled on the stick, and try to find something to blame the plane.
Unlike in your car example where the steering authority is “suddenly” reduced, the flight envelope protection system is always here, and pilots are trained accordingly. Full stick back is not uncommon on Airbuses, e.g. in a windshear escape manoeuvre. And as pointed out by others in this thread, it was actually the correct action. Oh well, if alpha max was 1° higher on the 320, maybe the landing would have been softer.
See "Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson",
by William Langewiesche. He points out that pulling the stick all the way back in a near-stall is what you're supposed to do in an Airbus. That tells the flight control system to do all it can to reduce the sink rate but to avoid a stall. Lacking engine power, the control system was able to provide a controlled crash. (If the engines had been providing power, the control system would have throttled them up.) Making the decision to ditch in the Hudson, rather than trying for, say, Teterboro and running out of altitude, was the important pilot action.
The real miracle of that episode was that there were enough boats nearby, including large ferries, to rescue everyone before the aircraft sank.
Ouch!