Right, here we go again. VRS and Vuichard discussions. I really hoped that was over.
@Robbie: You are so right.
VRS is a very good excuse for a pilot who finds itself in a situation where the "bottom dropped out". With that, you are pardoned, because VRS sounds like he/she was just unlucky. It is by far not as bad in the perception of peers and public, than having to say: "I messed up". Despite the fact, that he/she also "f**** up" by getting in VRS. But it is so much easier to blame a mysterious aerodynamic effect, than your own stupidity.
It is very human, to lock for another culprit. There are quite a few statements of pilots out there, where they claimed, that they lost power in the worst possible moment. But afterwards nobody finds anything wrong with the engine.
Human beings are often very bad sensors. When we are focussed on a certain task, we are capable of ignoring a lot of other things that are going on. Even though our brains are extremely powerful in processing information, our brain is optimised for efficiency, not processing information in parallel. When we are tired, the brain shuts down even more unimportant informations. That is the precise moment, when we are surprised by something we did not expect to happen and our reaction time becomes a lot longer. In our case here, it is exactly why in the end, the question if it was VRS or not, is really not important, because in either case, the result is the same. The big mistake was made when the pilot decided to come in fast with a tailwind. When the "bottom dropped out", he was too surprised to do anything that could have saved the day in the altitude he had left. And bang.
I am certain, Transport Canada will find out what happened, but just using probabilities, I can stay with my bet, that it wasn't VRS. Furthermore, the aerodynamics of VRS are much more complicated than Vuichard and pilot handbooks make us believe and I am pretty sure that in this case, it did not happen.