How I might've saved the Air France jet

You have no air speed, no air pressure, and no altitude readings. Plus it is at night (with weather conditions) so visual clues are all but nonexistent.

Your stick shaker concept might work but then again it might not, you could end up going too high, too low, too fast or too slow. You also might lose a lot of altitude on the aircraft each time you test your airspeed until you crash into the ocean and die. Since going close to stall speeds reduces your air speed significantly and costs you altitude.

Ultimately a pitot-static system failure is a no-win scenario at night. The best you can do is have another aircraft escort you like a tug.

The glass angle thing is fairly pointless since they already have a much more accurate (and not computer controlled) version of the same in every aircraft for the last 100+ years. Your propeller hat also wouldn't work because of the way air pressure works. Turning the number of rotations into anything meaningful would be no easy task and might just be fruitless.

GPS wouldn't work since it wouldn't tell you your *actual* speed, just your ground speed. You might be able to create a GPS backup that waits for a pitot-static failure and then assumes your airspeed based on the previous pitot static readings and the relative ground speed. But of course that wouldn't help if the plane just took off (which is often the case with this type of technical fault).

I have no solution for this type of fault except, design aircraft with more redundancy. This is an extremely light and cheap piece of technology so why not put in less accurate versions all over the aircraft? The main "super accurate" one goes down, then bring up one that is 10-20% off and fly with that.

Because the pitot-static system failed. The media reports of computer failure are misleading.

Here is the messages received in order.  

- WARNING - Auto Pilot involuntary disengage
- WARNING - Flight Control Protection degraded. High, low speed lost. Bank and Angle of Attack Protection degraded
- Alternative Law* Set
- WARNING - Loss of instrument precision
- WARNING - Auto Thrust involuntary disengage
- WARNING - TCASE failure (Traffic Collision Avoidance System)
- WARNING - Rudder Limiter Failure
- FAILURE - Pitot probes (Pitot Static System failure)
- WARNING - Loss of instrument precision
- WARNING - Air Data Reference rejected (junk got fed into the Flight Computer)
- FAILURE - Backup Airspeed, Altitude, Pressure sensor failure
- FAILURE - Inertia Reference System fault (altitude, flight path vector, track, heading, acceleration, angular rates, ground speed, vertical speed, and aircraft position lost)
- WARNING - Primary flight control computer fault
- WARNING - Backup Flight control computer fault
- WARNING - Flight Management Guidance Envelope computer fault

Alternative Law = Fly by wire but with safety systems disabled (e.g. Limiters)
Normal Law = Full fly by wire with all safety systems (normal flight status)
Direct Law = Manual control

Previously: "An Air France Airbus A340-300, registration F-GLZL performing flight AF-279 from Tokyo Narita (Japan) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (France), was enroute at FL310, when the airplane went through a line of thunderstorms. The captain's air speed indication suddenly dropped to 140 knots, the systems issued an alert regarding disagreeing speeds (NAV IAS DISCREPANCY), the navigation display showed a tail wind component of 250 knots. The captain released control of the airplane to the first officer and tried to switch his display from ADIRU1 to ADIRU3. 2 minutes later autopilot and autothrust disconnected and the fly by wire changed into alternate law. The crew noticed icing conditions (static air temperature [SAT] -29 degrees Centigrade) and switched anti ice including pitot heating systems from automatic to on. The speed indications became normal again and agreed again, the autoflight systems were reengaged and ATC informed of severe icing. ATC reported, that two flights had just passed the location without problems. When the crew attempted to reset and reengage ADIRU 1 two times, the system again brought the message "NAV IAS DISCREPANCY" on both attempts, although the speed data appeared consistent. The crew suspected polluted pitot tubes.

Maintenance found, that the drainage holes of all three pitot tubes had been clogged, rendering it very likely that weather combined with the clogged drainage holes caused the incident. Maintenance had reported more clogged drainage holes on A330 and A340 aircraft in the past to Airbus Industries. Airbus Industries was aware of the problems, changes had already been introduced to the pitot tubes on the A320 family, where similiar problems had occured. A modification of the A330/A340 pitot tubes was already planned by AI."

That sounds very familiar. In fact almost identical.