Originally Posted by
xjtguy
Or put another way, a crew flying a perfectly good airplane let it fly THEM into the water.
Actually, no the airplane didn't stall itself, the PF did. And then he kept it that way. Hard to argue that guy wasn't a poor pilot, even though an instrument failure caused the initial confusion. He had time to experiment with the power and pitch to attempt to figure out which instruments to trust but he was too scared to try.
A design feature of the aircraft prevented the PM from realizing what the PF was doing and he waited way too long to take control in a rapid descent. The captain came back too late to sort out the problem.
A malfunction, some design quirks, a weak PF, and a slow PM.