As investigators hunt for what caused an AirAsia jet to crash in an equatorial storm on December 28, the aviation industry is still struggling to apply the lessons of accidents in similar weather over the past decade.

It is too early to say whether the Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea due to pilot error, mechanical problems, freak weather or – as most often happens in aviation disasters – a combination of factors.

But its apparently uncontrolled plunge, coming after a series of other fatal crashes blamed at least in part on loss of control, has refocused attention on whether pilot training programmes need to improve.

Critics say pilots don’t get enough training on how to react when an airliner stalls or loses lift, and that changes in guidance about best practices have been slow.

“The lessons have not been learned to this day,” said David Learmount, one of the aviation industry’s leading safety commentators. “Everyone knows what the problem is, but nobody is doing anything about it.

Though rare, loss of pilot control ranks as the single biggest cause of air travel deaths. Two crashes in particular forced the issue – the 2009 losses of an Air France flight from Rio De Janeiro to Paris, and a Colgan Air turboprop near Buffalo, New York.

In both, confused pilots ignored or countermanded warnings of an impending stall, a condition where a plane loses lift because the air flow over its wings is too slow. The Air France jet took a four-minute, 38,000 feet plunge into the ocean. Despite repeated stall alarms, the control stick was fatally yanked backwards.

Critics say pilots don’t get enough training on how to react when airliners stall or lose lift

Classic stall training calls for pilots to push the control stick forward, nosing the plane down so it will swoop lower and regain speed, which is effective but uncomfortable.

But over the last 30 years, most airlines encouraged their pilots to hold the control stick broadly steady and gun the engines to power their way out of a stall, trying to keep the ride as level as possible.

In examining stall crashes from that period, that procedure “wouldn’t have helped and would have led to more accidents than it prevented,” said Claude Lelaie, a retired former chief test pilot at Airbus.

In a rare joint move from 2009, Airbus and Boeing called for a return to robust cockpit procedures that prevailed “when the old guys like me were being trained,” Lelaie said. “We were told to push the stick at the first sign of a stall.”

But it took several years to set rules that ensure pilots receive regular refresher training and to root out the disputed cockpit procedures of past decades.

The new voluntary guidelines by the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which coordinates safety, took effect just six weeks before the loss of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, and will take years to be implemented around the globe.