I am in no way defending the crew's actions but, when discussing manual flying, I think it's worth remembering that having turned off the generators they were left with standby instruments only and zero stabilisation (in IMC), so it was a bit more complicated than simply hand flying. Nonetheless, pretty astonishing to have been out of control for that length of time. I find the crew's actions in making non-standard interventions, resulting in a loss of control, reminiscent of the AirAsia accident a few years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indone...ia_Flight_8501
n December 2015, the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT or NTSC) released a report concluding that a non-critical malfunction in the rudder control system prompted the captain to perform a non-standard reset of the on-board flight control computers. Control of the aircraft was subsequently lost, resulting in a stall and uncontrolled descent into the sea. Miscommunication between the two pilots was cited as a contributing factor.[1][2][3]
It will be very interesting to see the final report and more data on the flight trajectory. Anecdotally I have heard they fell out of the cloud base at 1500 ft doing 13,000 ft/min (7 seconds to impact) and pulled 4g in the recovery!
EDIT - I am hearing from a friend that when you move the electrical gangbar it takes out the battery too, so also the standby instruments (an integrated EFIS). So, even when you realise your error and reset it, everything has to power up, go through their BITs etc and come on line. So, unstabilised in IMC with no instruments - sporty!
Can any 139 pilots confirm?