Ladies and Gentlemen, when an Airbus 330 suffers a total electrical failure, flight is still possible through the use of backup. The horizontal stabilizer can be used to sustain flight in the vertical plane until electrics can be restored. The rudder on this particular aircraft would be electrical and therefore control in the horizontal plane can be achieved through the use of asymmetric power. But this is difficult to perform in the best of conditions and if the aircraft entered into a descending roll, a spin could be inevitable and would be unrecoverable unless electrics would be restored.
But let us look at what takes place if a severe lightning strike were to have taken place. There could have been a short circuit of the buses and hence the engine driven generators would drop off line. If the short exist on the buses even the likely hood of restoring power through the APU generator is unlikely.
In this situation, the emergency generator should now come on line and will more than likely be powered by the engine driven pumps and not the RAT. The RAT will only power the emergency generator if there is an unlikely combination of engine failure/failures and short circuiting. This situation is so unlikely that the summary section for the Electrical Emergency configuration does not take into account that the Emergency generator is powered by the RAT and hence that summary can only be used if the emergency generator is being powered by the engine driven pumps.
Now having said all of that is it really likely that the emergency generator could not come online? Did the engine driven pumps fail to get the emergency generator online, and if so, is it likely then that the RAT failied to power the emergency generator after the engine driven pumps could not do its job? Well the answer to this is yes it could happen and this would be indicated by looking up on the overhead panel and seeing a red light next to the SYS for the emergency generator. But highly unlikely I say.
But let us say then that the emergency generator does not come online, there are 2 batteries that can supply minimum power to some of the flight instruments for 25 to probably 30 minutes but the CPC's will not be powered and hence the aircraft will now depressurize.
Did these pilots try and perform some sort of emergency descent with an aircraft which may have had MAN PITCH TRIM ONLY, ie an aircraft that was in backup? If this was the case then the aircraft could have gone into a roll and hence a spin that would have been unrecoverable.
But I believe that one thing is for sure and that is this aircraft had two working engines but with a flight control problem.