Someone mentioned earlier in the thread, that this crash seemed like the one where the Air New Zealand plane was coming off lease and was being checked, before being returned to Air New Zealand from a German airline. It crashed into the Mediterranean, because both angle of attack sensors froze due to water getting in them, when the plane was pressure washed instead of dusted off. They worked fine at first, then froze at altitude. The computer didn't have the right inputs and didn't realize anything was wrong, and the pilot wasn't able to figure out the problem and take over from the computer in time, because everything happened so quickly. That was in good weather. This Air Asia crash, if it's similar to the Air New Zealand crash, was in bad weather making diagnosis and recovery even harder, so even with the best pilots, they may not have had a chance to recover. All their effort had to go to working the problem, so that may explain why ATC couldn't get them on the radio, even though they still saw them on radar for little while.