Originally Posted by gums
It could be the c.g. I tellya!!! If that plane had a c.g. further back than it normally used, the thing could easily settle into a fairly stable deep stall if its pitch attitude was steep and then it ran outta air molecules for the tail to work with - just like the Viper. Further, as with the Viper, the reversionary control laws allow lots more forward tail movement command using the control stick than aft stick commands.
I'm not going to be nit-picking about such a definition because the full loss of elevator control, in any case - not only cg related, could result at the same situation.
Nonetheless, I'm sticking with the impact description provided by the BEA and I can't see why such a description would imply a mandatory "deep stalled" attitude ; the vertical vector may also be due to inertia. There is no description of an excessive pitch rate at sea level (alpha Max should be well above 35° if she had some thrust remaining). Without much more details provided, it may look also like a CFIT attitude to me.
Originally Posted by gums
The data plots are gonna be real interesting, and I am willing to bet folks will blame the crew.
It would certainly be easy (too easy?) to find something that they did which would have been a contributory factor to the end result. As a matter of fact, we still have no idea today to what they were really (exactly) confronted.
S~
Olivier