Originally Posted by
Flightcap
I've always wondered whether they thought they had a tailplane stall....... for which correct recovery is aft elevator, retract the flaps, power to a specified (not necessarily full) setting. Given the fact that tailplane stalls occur more readily with flaps extended, and that the stall occurred at the moment of flap extension, the "recovery" they tried to perform would have made sense. Obviously, it would have sense EXCEPT for the super low airspeed and stick shaker. There is no excuse for missing these cues. But I'm still curious what any Q drivers would think. Could the conditions of flight have suggested a tailplane stall?
No. Ludicrous to imagine that this crew, which was functioning at the kindergarten level instantly and without any discussion advanced to the Phd level and executed a recovery procedure for a condition which they were never trained on and had probably never even heard of.
They reacted like chimpanzees...flaps make bad thing happen, retract flaps. Nose drops suddenly, pull back on stick.
No need to apologize or muddy the waters on behalf of the crew. The system set them up for this.