Reading through all the posts on this subject I am a little concerned by all the references to "deep stall". Of course it is far too soon to really know what went on on the flight deck, we must wait until the true and complete facts are known (if we are to be permitted this luxury). However it is clear that the aircraft descended in a stalled condition. It is likely that this stalled condition could have been recovered from given appropriate control/trim inputs. A deep (or super) stall cannot be recovered from. It almost invariably occurs in a T tailed aircraft in which the airflow off the stalled wing envelops the tailplane rendering it ineffective and with insufficient authority to reduce the pitch attitude and, thus, the AoA. The 340 is clearly not T tailed so I suspect the dirty airflow at, 40 degrees AoA, would have been way above the tailplane which could have been effective.
The T tail deep stall problem was driven into us on the ETPS course with the BAC111 accident on Salisbury plain being the accident that first drew attention to the condition. I know that we were acutely aware of the dangers on the VC10 but were quite happy to take a TriStar well up to the actual stall. Normal, traditional recovery action as I have taught to all my students (and was taught to me from day 1 on the Harvard) worked immediately every time.
Like many others on this thread I have been becoming increasingly concerned that, in the quest for minimising cost, the bean stealers have succeded reducing training to a dangerous level. Surely recovery from a stall must be an instinctive reaction, not a situation requiring reference to the abnormal check list! As an old fashioned QFI (a military flying flying instructor to those unfamiliar with the term) I still think that all students should be taught to recognise and recover from an incipient spin in any attitude, not just the approach to the stall. Meldrew rant now over.