Originally Posted by
Chesty Morgan
Yaw.
NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said during one of the briefings that the bank angle reached 41.3 degrees (or was it 41.5?). He then proceeded to say that your first reaction would be to grab the
yoke and correct it. Since he was an airline pilot for 24 years, I doubt he would have confused bank angle with yaw. Certainly one of the staffers may have given him misinformation, but it doesn't sound like it. (Edit: I misunderstood Chesty's terse answer. My apologies.)
Link to relevant portion of briefing
The aircraft began a rapid uncommanded left roll of about 41 degrees of bank angle. So usually when you're flying on an airliner you rarely get over about 20-25 degrees of bank. This went over to 41 degrees. The pilots leveled the wings.
Then during the Q&A one of the reporters asked him about the roll and he elaborated: