Judging from the closest met sounding to the accident time there almost certainly would've been icing at FL80 and probably also at FL150
Good info. Do you have a link to that please?
I guess both were programming the FMS for new destination, possibly unaware of A/P not engaged
I agree, their intention must have been to divert after that fateful approach. Good point about the A/P. I can't speak for this crew, but I would have got the A/P in pronto, but the air was very rough (which it can be at ROV) then it is quite likely that A/P engagement would have been later than sooner. I personally have made the cardinal error of pressing the CMD button but failing to check the FMA. The aircraft flew itself, in level flight, with slight turn for 30 seconds before I noticed! It is quite an insidious error to make.
The problem is with this suggestion is the pitch down was far too sudden. The aircraft would have had to have been massively out of trim and the effort require to make the steady climb shown in the data considerable if out of trim to such a degree. Likewise, even with moderate thrust and the aircraft trimmed, the amount of effort required to achieve such a sudden pitch change would, in my opinion, be beyond beyond reason.
If it banked enough to cause such a pitch change then surely it would have deviated a considerable distance from the runway centreline, which it didn't.