Rate of fall at 16 ft per sec per sec is calculated only in a vaccum. Check your math again. Any outside force or drag has an effect at all times. The rate at which an object reaches terminal velocity will differ due to drag and due to altitude or air pressure. Mass or inertia can over come drag for a short period of time. Shoot a rifle or arrow into the air. It will continue to climb until drag AND gravity over comes it.
Pardon me... but it is 32 feet per second per second not 16, the force of gravity is still the same in a vacuum or in air, but you may have to account for other forces that may counter it -the 16 feet is the distance covered by that accelerating force over one second starting from a stationary position relative to that vector.
Also, I am well aware of the drag from the atmosphere as a countering force which determines terminal velocity when the collision enough of the molecules of the air imparts a force sufficient to equal the force accelerating the moving mass. The drag of the atmosphere would act in opposition to the pull of gravity pulling the plane down and LENGTHEN the time of the fall from the ideal vacuum conditions... in which there is no terminal velocity except perhaps that of light.
Since we already know within five seconds how long it took to splash into the ocean from the moment the event that started the chain of events, adding the zoom climb and adding drag would lengthen that time even farther than the observed event allows time for.
That 3200 foot climb the CIA demonstrated in its cartoon is also an ideal distance... the climb that would result from converting 100% of the forward momentum of the plane into upward momentum... also ignoring the countering force of drag. That means stopping ALL forward momentum and converting it instantly into upward momentum... it didn't happen, otherwise the plane would have gone STRAIGHT UP and then STRAIGHT DOWN and splashed in directly under the initiating point. Since it splashed in 2.7 nautical miles from the initiating point, we know that 100% of the forward momentum was NOT converted into altitude... in fact we know that a high percentage of the calculated forward momentum was required to be used against the drag of the atmosphere to get the powerless, noseless aircraft to the splashdown point. If it had been used in the climb, it would not have been where it was found!
The CIA and NTSB have both refused, even in the face of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits from Ray Lahr, to provide the theory and calculations that they used to create their zoom climb scenarios. Why? The observed known facts and math only works for a ballistic fall in atmosphere from the initiating point and does not allow for any zoom climb.