MD-80s' stick pusher
MD-80 has both a stick shaker and stick pusher. Is the first -without trace- triggered a bit earlier than the latter?
The control seemed to be lost very quickly after the beginning of the second EPR anomaly and the airflow distorded around the whole plane, far from the traditional shematics theorizing "stall" around a sole wing profile, or on over-simplified polar curves of aircrafts who are said "don't stalling", or not discriminating wings of different stall behaviour pitching down or not.
I agree to use that Machinbird's expression - a full develloped stall- allowed by his experience of flights in transient situations, at the limits of the flight envelop, which was the case too in that upset. Probably in the helicoidal dive the AOA on one wing or both was lower than the wind tunnel wing stall AOA with classical speed range.