Gums,
Thanks for those thoughts - I've not seen a thorough analysis of the dynamics of 447 post stall, maybe there is a link somewhere in this thread and I missed it, but it's surely not just a question of adequate pitch authority. I know that the aircraft was, as you say, merely deeply stalled, not deep stalled, and so it was capable of being pitched down, had the crew ever tried to do so. But that doesn't alter the fact that its flight path angle was very very negative and even going to say 5 deg nose down would still have left it fully stalled with massive AOA and drag. I don't know how realistic simulators are in that area, not very I suspect, so assertions that the sim recovered are not totally convincing. I believe Airbus stopped at about 20 deg in their flight test... and I thought they deserved a medal for going that far.