airtrens:
An additional perception factor was the angle of the ice crystals - likely present - hitting the windshield. Where they in an angle giving the perception that the A/C is nose down?
Given that the flight was being counducted in Night, IMC conditions at high altitude, in the clouds ... if they were looking out the window that would be an airmanship problem far more serious that if ice were hitting the windshield. That said, the most likely theory seems to be, at that temp and altitude, ice crystals forming, not ice hitting the aircraft in the form of sleet or hail. From the data so far.
Infrequent:
Without attitude indication at night in IMC, I don't think they would have have kept wings anywhere near level.
Agreed. Easy to lose it, particularly if they were in turbulent air. (Won't digress into how one could finesse a partial panel sort of scan using only heading ... that way lies madness! 
)
bear:
Some possibilities show these guys did everything by the Book. Even the procedure at the STALL Warning. Both of them.
As Nigel pointed ou, perhaps everything except the pitch and power thing for UAS ... if more CVR info becomes available, we may see how far into that procedure they got/went.
Nigel:
There was at least one simultaneous sidestick input, which gives the algebraic sum of both inputs, and is completely forbidden. The correct procedure is to announce "I have control" and take control by pressing and holding the red pushbutton on the sidestick.
If I remember, this was in the end game, when someone took the controls, perhaps to overcome a losing situation. (Possibly they pushed buttons as the conversation of “your controls” took place.)
Wasn't this about when one pilot said they were hitting ten thousand feet ... absent more CVR info, we don't know all of the communication about controls. The second interim shows me that there was a verbal component to the last (and ultimately futile 
) passing of controls.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 27th Jul 2011 at 21:23.