Originally Posted by
exeng
Even if they were (which I very much doubt) such an action would not lead to the very high pitch angles seen before the final 'departure'.
+1
Back in the Seventies Lufthansa lost one of their first 747s by taking of w/o Slats/Flaps properly set. Consequence was that the aircraft never really gained altitude before crashing.
The overall loss of lift will be so much bigger than any potential Pitch Up moment that the Aircraft will probably start to settle immediately instead of continuing to climb at an insane deck angle until finally running out of energy as we saw in the vids of this accident.
In this case the aircraft gained signifcant altitude for the position over the runway especially considering a high TOW. It must have had a high lift coefficient up to the point where it ran out of airspeed.
From what can be seen on the video I really see only two general mechanisms that seem to fit:
- CG too far aft (for whatever reason)
- Tail Control Surfaces deflection (for whatever reason).
I would be very surprised if it wasn't one of those two.
That said, wrt to the exact reason for either a CG problem or a control surface problem I see simply no way how this can be concluded from this video. I'm afraid we will have to leave this to the NTSB.