Originally Posted by
172_driver
There is also the CRJ200 in Sweden that plunged into the ground in a similar fashion. One of the IRUs malfunctioned but instead of removing the attitude all together it displayed incorrect attitude information.
This accident happened in the dark in the middle of the night, starting at about 33,000 feet. No moon either if I recall. The crew was preparing decent or some other task so they had some lights on in the cockpit. The result was that they had very little to no outside visuals.
When the erreonous high pitch attitude showed up on the fligth display of the PF he didnt cross check with the PM's display, instead he almost instantly pushed control column forward reaching negative G as high as -1G.
VMO at 315 knot was exceeded 17 sec after onset. At 30 sec after onset IA was passing 400 knots and altitude was 24,000 feet. Crashed at near supersonic speed at around -80 degrees pitch and got completely pulverized. It took about 120 sec from onset at 33,000 feet until crash.