Divers recover part of the tail section from the Air France jet that crashed in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009.

As Air France Flight 447 plunged in the darkness two years ago, its pilots had ample opportunities to save the jet. Instead, as has happened repeatedly on airliners around the world, they exacerbated the problem, according to preliminary information released by French investigators.

The Air France disaster, which killed 228 people on their way from Brazil to France on June 1, 2009, is the latest example -- and one of the most deadly -- of the biggest killer in aviation: a plane going out of control.

The latest information in the Air France case, released Friday by French investigators, is spurring renewed calls for better pilot training and other measures.

"If this was a technical problem (with the jet), we'd be saying we need to fix this," says John Cox, a former airline pilot and safety consultant who has written on loss of control for the British Royal Aeronautical Society. "There have been those of us in the industry that have been arguing for this for decades."

What is needed is better training so pilots are not as startled and confused during emergencies, and better tools to warn them when their planes are about to go out of control, the experts say.

Plummet from the Sky

The French government's preliminary report describes what happened:

The Air France jet's 7-mile plunge into the Atlantic Ocean began suddenly when the jet's instruments went haywire. Ice had blocked the jet's speed sensors; the pilots could not tell how fast they were going. Warnings and alerts sounded almost simultaneously.

In response, the pilots made a series of mistakes, according to the French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the agency that investigates aviation accidents.

Instead of flying level while they diagnosed the problem, one of the pilots climbed steeply, which caused a loss of speed. Then the aggressive nose-up pitch of the plane and the slower speed caused air to stop flowing smoothly over the wings, triggering a loss of lift and a rapid descent.

They had entered an aerodynamic stall -- which has nothing to do with the engines, which operated normally -- meaning the wings could no longer keep the plane aloft. Once a plane is stalled, the correct response is to lower the nose and increase speed.

For nearly the entire 3.5 minutes before they crashed into the ocean, the pilots did the opposite, holding the Airbus A330's joystick back to lift the nose.

Although the response was improper, it would be wrong to simply blame the pilots without looking at how well they were prepared for the emergency and whether the information they received could have confused them, says Michael Barr, an instructor at the University of Southern California's Aviation Safety and Security Program. "They're sitting there happy, the autopilot is on," Barr says. "Next thing you know, lights are flashing, warning horns are on. There were probably 10 warnings or messages coming to the crew at the same time."

Similar miscalculations and miscues have been common in fatal accidents:

- In the Colgan Air crash Feb. 12, 2009, near Buffalo that killed 50 people, the captain overreacted to a warning that the Bombardier Q400 turboprop had gotten too slow and yanked the nose of the plane upward, the National Transportation Safety Board found. If he had pushed the nose down, the board said, he might have saved the plane.

- On Aug. 16, 2005, a West Caribbean Airways Boeing MD-82 crashed in Venezuela, killing all 160 people aboard, after the jet stalled at 33,000 feet. The Venezuelan government blamed the pilots for failing to recognize that they were in a stall during a 3.5-minute plunge, despite alerts from the automatic stall warning system.

- On Oct. 14, 2004, a Pinnacle Airlines jet crashed near Jefferson City, Mo., after the pilots stalled the Bombardier CRJ-200 at a high altitude, the NTSB found. Both pilots died; no passengers were aboard.

Similar accidents killed 1,848 people in the 10 years ending in 2009, according to jet manufacturer Boeing.

Limitations of Human Brain

It may not be possible to prevent all such accidents.

Corporate pilot Patrick Veillette, who is writing a paper on the subject for the International Society of Air Safety Investigators, says there is evidence to suggest that the human brain cannot grasp what is going on in the most severe emergencies.

Still, Cox and others say stall training has been lacking for decades.

Newer flight simulators can better teach airline pilots how planes respond in stalls, and their use should be dramatically increased, they say.

Responding in part to the Buffalo crash, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has proposed improving pilot training.

"If we're going to make sizable improvements in aviation safety, we need to deal with upset recovery," Cox says. "That's where the risk is."