[mannykannot]

I am not going to speculate about this crash, but the claim made here about stability is missing one very important fact: just about every airframe exhibits spiral instability and will eventually undergo spiral divergence unless controlled by a pilot or automatic system. This results in an airplane descending in a steeply nose-down spiral even though it is trimmed for level flight. As a result, most spatial-disorientation crashes end in a steep nose-down impact with the surface, as in the case of JFK jr.

Such accidents are way too common - Informally, I get the impression that there may be up to one a month in the US alone - but they are rare in airline operations and I am not suggesting that this is likely here.

[azalemeth]

This is true -- and I forgot to mention it (although I was perhaps obliquely alluding to such things with the CIFT comment). My brain meant the more the conventional dutch roll / longitudinal static stability concerns that are perhaps more actively considered in airframe design and aerodynamics. Thank you for pointing this out.