"T o d d P a t t i s t" wrote in message
news
[...]
I'm not familiar with how these engines react at high
altitude/high AOA, but I presume that shutdown is one
possible consequence since the AOA sensor automatically
turns on continuous ignition at high alpha. Anyone want to
comment?

Well, I'm no expert either. But my understanding is that high angles of
attack can result in a compressor stall, resulting in loss of combustion,
thus the automatic operation of the ignition system.

Jose made the comment that he wondered if hypoxia wasn't playing a part in
this. After reading the transcript, I can certainly see where he got that
idea. The pilots seem relatively oblivious to what's going on, they fail to
immediately start flying to a safe landing site (which IMHO is the very
first action after any engine failure), and they spend WAY too much time
trying to restart the engines, rather than planning for an emergency
landing.

One other thing I noticed was that the one pilot was several times
commenting on maintaining their airspeed at 170 knots, leading me to believe
the airspeed wasn't very high. The "core lockup" article suggests that
slowing to 190 knots may be sufficient to reduce engine rotation completely.
If so, the pilots in this accident were WAY too slow to ensure the engines
didn't stop rotating, and should have flown at a MUCH higher airspeed during
the glide.

I assume that somewhere in the flight data recorder information is airspeed
information, but I don't have time to look at it right now.

All that said, this definitely appears to be one of those accidents where
there were several links in the chain leading to the accident, or at least
the fatalities. One key link was the failure to divert to an airport
immediately upon engine failure. Had they done so, I think all of the other
issues would have been academic, and we would have the two people who could
actually answer questions directly about what happened still alive.

Pete