@A0283
Answers to these questions might be of some assistence in future searches. Till this accident it seemed most likely, if anything was found on the surface, find vertical tail or rudder first. Would it help to give SAR crews a description of most probably objects to look for. Also helping to separate ocean garbage from aircraft components and fragments.
A vertical or close to dive into water would cause considerable damage to the nose of the aircraft and stresses would show that the aircraft hit something nose first.
Passenger injuries would show severe seatbelt injuries and seats would be broken away from the floor and compressed toward the front of the fuselage. I am not sure that pax would show the same broken legs that appear to be apparent in this case. There would also be more detritus from inside the fuselage.
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Theoretical Scenario]
The concertinering of the fuselage seems to show that the aircraft hit the sea surface belly first perhaps with a slight nose down to provide the hydraulic disconnection of the empenage at the pressure bulkhead. As pointed out several times the break line of the tail is not consistent so there may have been a one wing low and turning vector.
So as a theoretical scenario, loss of control, stall into a relatively flat spin. This would also fit with the descent rate, a dive would have been considerably faster more than 30,000 fpm.
From
Stall/Spin "
if the impact occurs nose down, at a high rate of descent which is typical of stall/spin scenarios, the G forces tend to be much higher, the aircraft does not slide much and there are resulting fatalities."
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Theoretical Scenario]