Flameout?
Who said anything about a double-engine flameout? All CycColl reported was a "significant reduction in torque of both engines." Maybe the engines just went to IDLE? If the engines did not completely flame-out, then all the electrical stuff could have (would have?) stayed online. Would the autopilot even have disengaged? How quickly would the first indication (light or horn) come on, and what would the RRPM be at that point?
So. The Big Question: Is there any way that the FADEC in the C++ can command *both* engines to come offline, say to IDLE, at the same time? Is there a single-point failure mode that could allow this?
Think of this bizarre situation: Both engines begin a decel to IDLE and the autopilot commands the collective UP! You, Mr. PIC are sitting there going, "WTF?!"
Heli-Comparator is quite right about one thing - pilots of larger helicopters are reluctant to do anything quickly or abruptly. And, if what some people are saying is true about how quickly an S-76 will bleed rotor rpm, the corrective action to such a "crazy" scenario would need to be both quick and abrupt: Ergo, significant (abrupt?) nose up cyclic input to get the disk up and loaded, and right-now! down on the pole. You'd have...what...a couple of seconds to make that happen?
One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two.
Too late! While you were sitting there trying to figure out what was going on, the RRPM just went away.
I can understand people not wanting to speculate about this accident. But for pilots who fly these aircraft with all the new technology, you have to wonder if there are hidden failure modes that are still to be discovered.
An S-76 pilot on another forum described it as, "edge of the seat stuff." And it's an apt description. For if something in a helicopter can fail in such a way that it causes *both* FADECs to bring the engines offline, while at the same time the autopilot is in a mode that would cause it to command the collective to come *up* in response to a loss of altitude, this is some serious sh*t. Because I'm not sure that even I, the super-pilot skygod that I am, would be quick and sharp enough to handle that one.
Are you?
One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three. Did you interpret all of the indications properly and do the right thing? (I gave you an extra second there because I'm generous.)