Originally Posted by
Adlerdriver
But the speed does matter. It’s the main reason the aircraft became uncontrollable. Had they stayed in the flight envelope, any trim setting, even an extreme one would have still been flyable. It wasn’t until that trim setting was combined with a speed well beyond limits that the aircraft was un-flyable. So saying “no matter the speed” as if the trim position alone doomed the aircraft makes absolutely no sense.
Sure, I will agree with you generally. But I said when THEY cut off the stab trim, in that particular scenario I am not sure if the plane was recoverable, no matter what they did with the speed going forward. This was at 5:40:35 – stab trim was cut out, the speed on the left looks like 300 kts (unreliable due to faulty AOA) and the right is about 325 from what I can see on the graph (the font is small). So they are within the flight envelope (just) and presumably the manual trim wheel did not work. How much do they need to slow down for the trim wheel to work? Do they have enough altitude and terrain clearance? Do they have the muscle strength to see this through? If you know that, good for you; to me it is not obvious. Maybe, maybe not.
I should add that we are going off on a tangent here. They didn't even try to slow down, so this is all highly hypothetical. My initial point was about trimming or failure to trim in extreme conditions.