Unfortunately not the first time...very similar one here on MD82
West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
thus reducing their maximum performance. With the anti-ice system on, the highest altitude at which the overloaded aircraft could fly - without stalling - was reduced to only 31,900 feet. The captain noticed the reduction in engine power, but he couldn't realize the source of the problem. Therefore, he started a rapid descent, as a precaution. At that time, the airspeed was already near stall speed and the autopilot had kept a nose-up attitude to maintain a constant height. When the airliner was pummeled by a sudden updraft, it finally entered a stall condition and the crew mishandled it. Although the CVR picked up the First officer correctly diagnosing the situation as a stall and attempting twice to communicate this to the captain, the captain was likely confused by the unusual behaviour of the engines, due to the anti-ice system and probably the air flow disruption caused by the updraft. The captain thought he was struggling with an engine flameout, which he told the first officer to communicate to the ground controller, and did not recognise the deep stall situation; he then mishandled the stall by maintaining nose-up attitude, which further decreased speed and deepened the stall until the plane eventually crashed.