Admittedly a very small and dubious one, but nevertheless, bearing in mind the suggested impact mode, could this really have been broken off (apparently by a forwards force & upwards bending moment) with the assocaited flaps in the retracted position?
I asked this question some time ago and got what seemed like a fair answer in that if the tail impacted first, it could have disintegrated leaving the vs free to float away. The only other possibility is that the vs separated in flight at some stage, but does the recovery position in relation to the remainder of material recovered support this view ?.
I just can’t accept that a perfectly serviceable aircraft would break up in mid air unless airframe stress limits were exceeded by (probably) quite a wide margin. The only things remaining, assuming the pilots were not practicing aerobatics, are extreme weather conditions or massive systems failure. The acars evidence, really doesn’t support the latter, looking more like the result of what was happening, rather than the cause.
I don’t take sides re climate change, (too much politics, not enough science) but assume for a moment that climate change is in process and that more severe weather is one of the byproducts. Could it be that what used to be considered extreme weather conditions are now more commonplace and extremes are now more so ?. One snippet of evidence in context that might support this view is the increased incidence of pitot icing and failure in the last few years. Has this always been a problem, the result of changed flying practices, or what ?. Pitot probe design hasn’t changed much in decades, so why are they failing in the same way now ?…