Quote from _Phoenix
"Now, at 2h10m41s apparently Bonin was in control, he checked from his memory, UAS items: (THR) "yeah we’re in climb" then corrected the pitch to 5-7 deg, all seemed stabilized, but was only an apparent calm, before the disaster. Pilots had no physical cues whatsoever about the aircraft dramatic loss of speed and energy(3) "
Hi, I don't know your background, so I don't want to seem patronising. It may or may not be surprising for you to imply that lowering the nose to a pitch of between +5 and +7 degrees would be a sufficient correction. In fact, it would remain outside the acceptable envelope of pitch at that altitude.
To illustrate the point, the cruise TAS of an A330 is - let's say - 480 kt. That's 8 nm/minute, or 48640 ft/min. Starting from level flight (pitch around +2.5 deg), a pitch-up of just one degree gives a VS of about +800 ft/min. Pitching up to +6 at cruise altitudes would give an INITIAL VS of about +2800 ft/min. But even at Climb thrust the aeroplane would be simply trading kinetic energy for altitude. The climb rate would be completely unsustainable, so the IAS and Mach would decrease rapidly, and consequently the VS also.
The initial pitch-up remained uncorrected, and was the first bad move that led to this tragedy - as you know. Of course you are referring to a later phase, by which time nearly all the surplus kinetic energy had been squandered. This would have been evident to any jet pilot experienced at hand-flying climbs at high altitude. The clue would have been in the altimeter. IIRC, they had earlier discussed the possibility of climbing (gently) by 2000 ft, and had decided the aircraft was a bit too heavy. Yet - inexplicably - Bonin had mishandled a "zoom" climb of about that amount.
Finally if the aircraft was flying level, a pitch of +6 would give an AoA of +6, and the wing would probably be stalled, depending on the Mach. Some people contributing to this thread are simply unaware of the limitations of jet-transport handling near the top corner of the flight envelope.