There was that "Unidentified" pile of debris to the Northeast in the debris field, I always took that to be the tail feathers.
Or, were the PF inputs limited to independent elevators only (to include Roll?) Because the THS couldn't/wouldn't "move"?
If something got jammed there would have been clear traces of such thing in FDR. Similarly if elevator went away then, while active jack could conceivably stay at it's place, the other (redundant one) working in "damping mode" would've got "desynchronized" from the primary one as there would have been no surface to push/pull it. That should be clear on FDR.
RWA:
Why trim didn't change during those nose down actions has been discussed already. There are 2 primary options...
1. Plane went into abnormal attitude law (but there is no tip about that in any BEA statements)
2. Inputs were not significant enough to cause trim change. Some AB engineer or someone other knowing details of A330/A340 control systems could shed more light on that, but nowhere it's said that trim change starts instantly after pitch input. It's perfectly conceivable (and in fact reasonable) that trim starts to change only after stick input is persistent. Note also that it took about 1 minute to get trim from 3 to 13 deg, so one should expect to wait another minute to get it back to 3 by automatic action. If one needs trim to change faster one does have that trim wheel in front of oneself.
Wrt. plenty of time to get that bird out of the fall while at FL100. This was not Cessna 172, this was AF447
heavy. 200tonne bird. Heavy airplanes
sometimes get recovered from "falling out of the sky" upset, but it's just that:
sometimes.
Back of envelope calculation shows that if they were at -30deg flightpath while at FL100 then maybe they could pull up. 2.5g pullup from -30 flightpath at 200kts true speed takes about 6000ft altitude, but add to that an altitude lost to first regain unstalled AoA (nose down to about -15deg from about +15deg -- it could not happen instantly, and they were falling at ~10000fpm or ~50m/s thus loosing about 150ft every second) could that plane pitch as much while loosing no more that 4000ft? Maybe...
But if they already were at -45deg flightpath (the flightpath angle when they hit the water) they stood no chance at FL100. Pullup itself would take ~8500ft, but pitching down 200t bird by 45deg (from ~+15 down to ~-30) while loosing only 1500ft? I don't see that.
I suspect, bubbers44, that the new (and IMO wrong) procedure was introduced because reduced vertical separation was also approved about that time? That factor might also have made flightcrews very nervous about 'sacrificing' any height in an upset?
In the middle of an ocean? Where the traffic is relatively small, and there are significantly horizonally separated airways for the traffic going NE and for that going SW, and where are no planes to be vertically separated from from FL100 up to FL600? Those guys know perfectly well that they can divert by significant amount, they can change level, etc. without any risk of collision.