I'll have to agree with Gums here. At LKP, AF447 was on its way, maybe not strongly down yet, but with greatly dissipated airspeed, probably in a relatively stable configuration, perhaps with one later gyration causing temporary loss of communications, and continuing on down until impact shortly after the last ACARS with vertical speed higher than horizontal speed.
The wing was doing what wings do at high AOA, dissipating energy.
The aircraft was intact as BEA concluded in their 2nd interim report. The path taken to the surface was
not that of a "ballistic agglomeration" , but determined by aerodynamic forces and the aircraft acted as expected given that it was well outside its normal flight envelope, and it had a heading, and that heading is reflected in the wreckage distribution, however the interpretation of that distribution is made difficult since we have no hydrodynamic data on each individual piece. We can only make assumptions regarding very dense shapes and very light shapes.
The key question is how does the A330 lose its flight envelope so quickly? Others as well as myself have proposed a number of mechanisms.
The Vmo/Mmo pitch up as experienced by the A340 is but one of them. In my estimation, the dynamic loss of control models offer the best explanation since they can account for the rudder travel limiter position easily.
Pure speculation at this point, but perhaps the apparent loss of ACARS was caused by the crew trying to break a stable stall by putting in a bootfull of rudder and holding it.
That rascal Bear is trying again to introduce his theory of inflight breakup. How does a person become so focused on such an unlikely scenario?
