I am not suggesting that the aircraft in question was stalled or not, but while the topic has moved to stall tests I add this;
There must be hundreds if not thousands of Hawker pilots like me who have done the post maintenance stall tests regularly following removal/inspection of LE anti icing panels.
The auto pilot should NOT be engaged, and crucially following the stall there should be NO attempt to recover with minimum loss of height
. (Like we were all previously required to do in the sim, but which has now, sensibly, been dropped from the training).
If the autopilot IS engaged when the aircraft stalls - it will disengage of its own accord anyway.
As soon as the back pressure is released (and believe me there is a
LOT needed to get it to stall) and thrust is added, the aircraft should be allowed to descend and accelerate before attempting to regain altitude - bearing in mind that you should have a LOT of space between you and the ground.
There is a requirement to calculate the expected IAS for activation of the stick shaker and stall, but from memory Hawker do not provide a table that gives this data for 17,000 feet that was mentioned in the highlighted AIN article. (IAS stall speed increases with altitude, as we all know).
Sometimes one wing or the other may drop violently, but I never had a Hawker enter a fully developed spin. My experience is that even a violent wing drop is easily contained as soon as the back pressure is released and both wings are fully unstalled. From memory (I'm no longer on the Hawker) any wing drop of more than 10 to 15 degrees requires rectification and re-testing before release to service.