[PuffinBlue]

And the captain actually noticed it, told the pilot pulling back on the stick to push forward, who did momentarily and then he pulled back again.

If you read the whole transcript and report it really does show just how wrong the pilot pulling back got it. And it speaks to the training and understanding that pilot had of how to fly the electronics vs how to fundamentally fly an aircraft.

[anoncoward111]

Agreed. Also, I can't imagine the feeling of the captain who was asleep in the crew area until the very end.

He quite literally kicked down the door to the cockpit and asked "What the hell are you doing?"

Moments later, the co-pilot at fault said "but I've had that stick down the whole time!"

[marksweston]

To me, this moment is one of the failure points in the incident and is entirely the captain’s fault.

Captain: What the hell are you doing?

Benin: We've lost control of the plane!

Robert: We've totally lost control of the plane. We don't understand at all... We've tried everything

Now, instead of a team working jointly on a problem, we have two juniors feeling that they have to justify and defend themselves to their captain. It’s a really poor psychological position to be in with a time-critical problem to be solved.

It’s a human response, obviously, but I’m betting it’s the opposite of what his training would have recommended.

IMO, in that moment, the Captain either needed to get his crew problem-solving, or take control himself. unfortunately he did neither.

[anoncoward111]

I think purely based on the text, your opinion is correct.

But I think at this point the plane was plummeting belly down (not nose down) to the ocean and they only had like 90 seconds to live.

By that point I think they all knew they were dead, even though their words don't indicate it. They were in pitch black conditions :(

[marksweston]

My understanding is that aerodynamic modelling and simulator runs have shown that a committed decision to push nose-down, regain airspeed and recover from the stall, could have been successfully initiated all the way down to 5000 feet. The Captain had another 2mins 15secs (approximately) before reaching that level, and another 30 secs before impact after that.

There was time, if only someone had said the word ‘stall’ out loud.

[sokoloff]

Indeed; it was a stunning lack of basic airmanship; I would expect more from a 10-hour pre-solo student pilot...

[barrkel]

I'd expect it from a student, because they're operating consciously. I'm not sure I'd expect it from someone who is in shock, who's experienced thousands of hours of uneventful operation and suddenly everything has changed.

I don't know easily panicked mentality can be tested for. Training is one thing, but training is typically designed to instill automatic response to predetermined stimuli. Sometimes what you want is a reset back to first principles and activation of conscious reasoning. Which is exactly what you don't get in shock or panic, and is the reason for training automatic response.