Originally Posted by
V1rhot8
What if they had a instrument problem that caused the aircraft to present bad attitude information (nose high). Next the crew adds max thrust and pushes forward on the control column to lower AOA /the perceived unusual attitude towards “level.” Then they are trying to determine whether the attitude information is wrong or if they had a pitot static issue. Once the break out of the clouds they recognise the severity of the situation and start to pull up, but given the high load factor from doing nearly 400KIAS they can only recover to -20 degrees pitch.
Pretty good theory...
Especially for the "why max thrust" question.