VS loss
Thanks for this extremely interesting thread. Remember the first thing found floating some distance from the main site was the neatly severed fin. There was much talk about the merits of composite materials and AA587 in New York (an A300).
All the talk about stalling and loss of stability brings me back to one of the first points made - did the airplane lose its VS and then go out of control, did it lose it from aero-forces during a spin/dive, or from impact with the water? Could the fin have been knocked off by an encounter with a huge up/downdraft?
-drl