Originally Posted by
SLFinAZ
Why do you assume blindly that you have "five minutes of struggle". Since normal pitch and power settings would generate a climb it's much more likely that the decision to maintain level flight was intentional for reasons unknown until the CVR is recovered. The initial flight profile was almost identical to the flight the previous evening but instead of continuing to climb out it appears that a decision was made to level off (in preparation to return?)...If/when the CVR is recovered I believe it's very likely that the interaction of the technician and the flight crew will be a critical aspect of the tragedy and crucial to understand why they broke from established procedures for dealing with the perceived issue.
Well, it is clear that initial event was followed by a period of controllable flight. Were this period ended with initial event degradation or another catastrophic event is a mystery so far.
As for technician-crew interactions, i don't think there were any. Technical guy mission (most logically) was not consulting but observation.