[cjbprime]

Yeah. I'm also not clear on the practicality of retrimming the aircraft at low altitude (Ethiopian was never >1000ft above ground) before impacting terrain after you disable the trim motor. You have to use a hand crank, because you just killed the trim motor altogether, and I think it takes several minutes (!) of cranking to get the jackscrew from one end to the other.

I wonder if they killed the trim motor and then failed to reach level flight before the ground got in the way.

[cmurf]

Fatigue as well. Looking at the flight track after the last and final nose down, it's they were overcome. Nose down -> more speed -> more stabilizer nose down force -> more nose down attitude even without a change in stabilizer -> more speed -> more stabilizer force -> more nose down attitude.

And then the ground got in the way.