Originally Posted by Carl Spackler

Incredibly sad. We all need to try to learn anything we can from the loss of these lives, and the following is meant for that purpose:

If they had cargo come loose, and If that resulted in an instant CG movement beyond the aft limits, a full aerodynamic stall and departure from controlled flight may have been preventable. I got to experience this very thing in the test environment, and the recovery technique is not immediately logical. At the first realization that pitch is not controllable (even with full forward yoke pressure), roll hard to the left or right to point the lift vector on or even below the horizon (90 to 100 degrees of bank angle). This causes the nose to quickly fall below the horizon and airspeed to rapidly increase assuming you leave power at full. As airspeed increases, level the wings and accept that the nose will rapidly rise again. Repeating this pattern results in gaining altitude with each roll reversal, and buys time to trim the stabilizer to the full nose down limit, select full flaps, and the aircraft is controllable with full forward yoke pressure.

There's no way you can pull this off without the instant reaction that only comes from prior training and mental preparation. Assuming the crew never got this training, they sadly had no chance. Not saying with certainty this recovery technique would have worked in this condition, but it may have.

Something to think about.

Carl

Originally Posted by Boomer

I would agree... but for the nose coming up in the final seconds.

Jury's out until they crack into the FDR and make some chilling cartoons for the rest of us to learn from.