PJ2:
Someone said a transport category aircraft loses control "gracefully" - very true, simply due to it's mass, and this is the very aspect which makes any actions and any recovery at high altitude, (as testified by those who have done high altitude stalls), dubious, especially in the circumstances this crew found themselves.
That might have come from misreading one of my posts. My point though was that the A330 is designed for the flight controls to degrade gracefully, not that the aircraft loses control gracefully. This is why one has 5 flight control laws (Normal, ALT1, ALT2, Abnormal Attitude, and Direct), so that when some protections are not available due to technical reasons, or are not applicable to the current aircraft state, whatever protections are applicable and technically available are used.
Of course gross upsets can happen very fast. I am hoping that folks did not take from my post that I was saying this couldn't happen....
