According to the plane's flight recorders, Flight 3407's descent into Buffalo was routine until roughly a minute before impact, when the crew lowered the landing gear, followed by the command to extend the wing flaps, which enable the plane to fly at slower speeds.
Almost immediately, these people say, the plane's air speed slowed rapidly, causing a stall-warning device known as a "stick-shaker" to cause the pilots' control column to vibrate. This was followed by a "stick-pusher," which automatically forces the stick forward.
At this point, the captain appears to have pulled back with enough force to overpower the stick-pusher and shoved the throttles to full power, according to people familiar with the matter. Safety board officials said the nose pitched up to a 31-degree angle. Already at a dangerously low speed, the wings immediately stopped generating lift. The plane whipped to the left and then entered a steep right turn, losing 800 feet of altitude in less than five seconds. At one point the right wing was perpendicular to the ground, according to information taken from the flight data recorder.
The pilots continued to fight with the controls almost all the way to the ground, and in the final moments, "it appeared that they were beginning to make headway when they ran out of altitude," said one person who looked at the data.