Originally Posted by
Derfred
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In fact, the only way to save that aircraft at that point in time would be a rapid aileron roll to inverted flight, and if the subsequent negative G inverted pushover manages to avoid ground contact, the airspeed would wash off to the point that manual aft trim would be possible, and a subsequent roll to normal flight, which would have to be accomplished prior to the rapidly impending inverted stall.
Denzel Washington could have told us that, but it usually takes a fair amount of alcohol and cocaine in your system to come up with such an outside-the-square solution…
That "solution", rolling inverted, was based on the real world actions of the crew of Alaska 261 when they had a failed stab trim jackscrew. There's even a little tip of the hat by the script writers to AS261's Captain Thomson's somewhat incredulous "Are we flying?" comment after they rolled inverted when Washington's character, Whip, asks "Are we gliding?"