DozyWannabe,
Not necessarily - if the sim experiments are anything to go by, then there was at least a minute after the THS hit the nose-up stop in which full nose-down could have remedied things.
Please revise posts #528 and #528, page 27
Bill Palmer... As the airplane's flight control system continued to attempt to maintain the commanded g-load—as the airplane started to sink—the pitch trim ran to full nose-up. From that point on, recovery may have been impossible unless the crew had the awareness to reduce that manually. I've tried that in an A330 simulator. Even with full nose-down pitch command, as the airspeed built up in the recovery the nose-up trim had too much influence to overcome and the airplane would pitch up despite any action on the sidestick. Trying to decipher the last moment that the airplane could have been recovered by a pilot that had all his wits about him is futile.
The experts in the article are right. Pilots need to routinely practice hand flying with all the automation off.