First rule of flying after Vr/V2 — achieve & maintain stable flight; all else is secondary. After achieving a ground speed of 80 knots up to Vr, the only reason for rejecting the takeoff is a condition that affects flight safety, ie, engine out, fire, etc.
Based on published reports that the load shift was communicated to the flight deck soon after rotation, the Captain/PIC would take command of the a/c and become the PF. The PF’s job would be to stabilize the flight, which is incredibly difficult to do when the aircraft is rotating beyond the ability of your flight control surface (elevator aka horizontal stabilizer aka hstab aka stab) to counter.
The gear position, master caution, EGPWS alarms, etc. are all irrelevant until controlled flight has been reestablished. Simply put, if the aircraft isn’t flying, then you’re likely dead, no matter what alarms are ringing or what the gear or flap settings are.
Best guess at what happened in the cockpit is that the PF pushed the yoke forward when the aircraft rotated past the point where he commanded it to stop. When that failed to arrest the pitch up rotation, he likely hit the TO/GA button to get max thrust (assuming a de-rated takeoff) and pushed the yoke into the firewall.
In any case, airspeed bled off pretty quickly, then the left wing stalled. He managed to level the aircraft, but then the right wing stalled and the ship yawed to the right. At this point, the aircraft was doomed. They were below flying speed — it was simply falling with a bit of forward momentum. The nose drops a bit during the yaw, followed by wings level, but this isn’t an indication that the aircraft is flying — just that enough air was moving over the wings during the short descent that the ailerons were able to function.
As another poster stated; they had neither the speed, altitude or thrust (collectively, the energy state) to recover from the stall before impact.
Thanks for your expert pilot analysis! This does seem to be the most evident scenario, especially as there was no visible sign of engine malfunction (flames, sound of compressor stall, shedding engine and cowling parts).
The sequence of pilot responses matches very closely the pilot’s response during the 1995 AWACS Yukla 27 bird-strike event:
http://flightsafety.org/ap/ap_nov96.pdf
Please allow me to make a personal request. Would you be so kind as to read and assess for technical accuracy my theory on my blog that the zone between V1 and VR, however long that may last on the runway, is a potential terrorist runway kill zone? I am a retired CPA, not a pilot.
It is my theory that the V1-VR zone needs to be proactively protected from attacks by GPS guided UAV/drones targeting individual turbines. The linear path down the runway and distance from the airframe centerline of each engine (and thus the distance from the runway centerline) can be reliably predicted using GPS coordinates.
All this is explained in detail at this blog post:
As I mentioned, the chief research officer of the Air Force thanked my for making him and presumably the Air Force aware of this vulnerability back in 2006, and he went out of his way to make sure that the Air Force One commander was aware as well.
Recently, it appears that terrorists may be trying to exploit a Landing Approach Kill Zone as discussed on my blog:
In case you missed it, here is the FR thread that I started do discuss drone at JFK which has some interesting discussion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014942/posts?q=1&;page=1#1