It’s a bit of a teaser as the status of the things that are most pertinent, AP in/out and AT in/out, are not given in the update. They must know by now but are not releasing that information.
Given that they say there were no
system failures, the scenarios I can think of right now are:
a) AP out - somehow they flew it into the ground, be it from an illusion of some kind and/or trimming so far forward it wasn’t recoverable.
b) AP in & AT out - acquires, then speeds up, AP applying more and more nose down trim until it disconnects or is disconnected.
Option b) would still leave the aircraft wanting to pitch up, as the trim runs reactively, unless the power was taken off suddenly as a reaction to a possible flap overspeed. Would that be controllable using the elevator alone? Not sure but my instinct says yes.
Option a) seems more likely but why was it so different from the first GA? What happened at 3,000’ that caused such a divergence? A bunt to follow the flight director if it acquired 3,000’ followed by a loss-of-control? Can’t think of much else...
