Would you keep full throttles, once having already a very large AOA exceedance , and all your way down during about four minutes?
from, say 40,000+ feet down to sea level?
Who said anything about full throttles? I'd pull power back toward idle until I began to lose pressurization.
Some of the the F-4 aircrews were issued Moon suits and as part of their syllabus were supposed to zoom up to 70,000 feet. The throttles had to be pulled back to keep from exceeding 100 % RPM, and if you got high enough, you had to shut them down to keep from exceeding RPM limits at altitude. Fortunately for me-they didn't have a moon suit in my rather common size.
Below quote in reference to engine operating envelope charts availability.
Not at hand.
But say 50-60 degrees AOA without much forward speed remaining at all (in order to stay into your 8000 m zone) will make such an angle for the airfoil to bypass in order to reach the compressors that I really doubt of the tolerance. I'm not even talking about all the tropical storm ice/water you will ingest at lower than cruise levels in the process.
It seems that the crew somehow was able to keep the engines running for the majority of the descent, at least some of which must have been at very high AOA. Perhaps the fan creates local airflow straightening in front of the engine at high AOA. Perhaps the power settings were low enough to avoid stall.
What make you think Direct Law may be lost?
The rudder would be still limited (could be an issue at low speed for stall recovery) but other surface control would still move freely.
I don't think that Direct Law would be lost. Just that the crew would not deliberately try to achieve Direct Law as a result of their training. Even with Direct Law, it would not be easy without an Airbus demonstrated procedure. You would probably have to dial in full nose down trim, and then quickly undo it on recovery. Something like what the F-16 has to do to recover.
The F-16 has to rock itself out of a deep stall if it gets stuck there.
Read "Semper Viper" in this link
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/image...49318_2157.pdf
to see all the fun you have been missing.
Link courtesy of Gums.