Interesting post. If you look at the FDR output, any conscious pilot would surely have been aware of the remarkable accelerations associated with the zoom climb and initial descent. If the Captain was awake you would hope he would have taken this awareness with him into the cockpit.
If he was indeed aware, it's a great pity a certain explanation didn't occur to him (or so it seems from the CVR) - at least to the extent of making specific inquiries and taking the obvious actions to save the ship if necessary. The generous interpretation is that he was utterly naive about events preceding his entry into the cockpit. What if anything do we know about his state of consciousness at climb initiation?
Last edited by SDFlyer; 26th Dec 2011 at 16:28.