One of the most famous pilots in aviation history says the crash of Air France Flight 447 would have been "much less likely to happen" if the doomed jetliner had been a Boeing plane instead of an Airbus jet.
CBS News reporter Mark Strassman posed the question to Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who safely guided all 155 passengers and crew aboard US Airways Flight 1549 to an emergency water landing in New York in January, 2009.
"I think it would have been much less likely to happen in a Boeing because the control wheels are large; they are obvious," Sullenberger said. "I think it could hardly have been missed."
For more than two years, a few pieces of debris floating in the Atlantic Ocean were all that was left of Flight 447, the answer to what happened seemingly lost forever on the ocean floor.
In May 2011, state-of-the-art submarines made a remarkable dive more than 2 miles below the ocean's surface and collected the crucial black box.
Expert analysis of the reported cockpit transcripts point to a perfect storm of problems, including weather, aircraft malfunction and pilot error.
But some said there was another contributing factor: the design of the Airbus cockpit.
CBS News sought help in understanding what happened from Sullenberger, who took Strassman into an Airbus simulator.
Sullenberger showed how little movement of the Airbus's sidestick is needed to raise the nose of the plane. (Boeing planes are flown with yokes.)
Pilots rarely perform the maneuver at high altitudes because it can be dangerous, but that's exactly what one Flight 447 pilot did, Strassman said.
Around 2:05 a.m., the Airbus A330 was flying through a storm system and all three of its speed indicators stopped working. As a result, the aircraft's autopilot turned off.
With the captain on break, the two co-pilots were forced to manually fly the plane.
The least experienced pilot, 32-year-old Pierre Cedric Bonin, was in the right seat, and said, "I have the controls."
Co-pilot David Robert was in the left seat, and even though considerably more experienced, he let Bonin fly.
Sullenberger: "Theoretically, it was possible to still fly the airplane under those conditions."
Strassman: "Challenging, but manageable?"
Sullenberger: "Yes."
Although they lost the autopilot and speed indicators, they were flying normally and safely. But then, suddenly, and without Robert knowing, Bonin did something almost inexplicable; he pulled back on his sidestick and raised the nose of the plane. That caused the aircraft to fall, and the stall warning sounded.
Over the next four and a half minutes, the stall warning sounded 75 times. But strangely, neither pilot mentioned it. And unbeknownst to Robert, Bonin kept the nose of the plane up almost the entire time -- exactly what he shouldn't do. It's a decision experts still can't understand.
Sullenberger: "It's difficult to explain. I just don't know why he did that."
Strassman: "And there is nothing to you that makes sense on any experience or intellectual level about pulling back when you should push forward?"
Sullenberger: "No."
Mark: "Nothing at all?"
Sullenberger: "No."
The chief investigator said the two pilots didn't "understand" the plane was in a stall.
The report finds they were in "a situation of near total loss of control."
Airbus would not comment for the CBS News investigation. When KIRO 7 Eyewitness News called Boeing on Thursday for comment, a representative said the company didn't want to say anything specific about Sullenberger's comment.
The representative did say "Boeing is looking at the (crash) report to see if there are any safety issues that could apply to Boeing aircraft. We strive to make our airplanes as safe as we can, and we know that Airbus does, as well."
Sullenberger and others are calling for increased pilot training, and perhaps even changes to the Airbus cockpit design.
"If we only blame the pilots, we will not have changed any of the fundamental underlying conditions. We won't have done our best to prevent this from happening again," Sullenberger said.
And prevention, he said, should be the goal of the investigation.