Quote:
Originally Posted by greglepore
No doubt. They did what they had to do, and the airline covered their tail by giving them extra training. Or it wasn't a downdraft, but not other real explanation.
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I think it’s very unlikely to have been a downdraft/microburst event. If that were the case they would’ve reported it to ATC at the time. You’d want any trailing aircraft to know about that kind of severe event and you’d also want to document in the recordings the reason for such a large deviation, 1400’, from your clearance.
If I were laying odds I’d say likely to have been a flap retraction below minimum airspeed. Possibly the Pilot Flying commanded a flap setting at too low a speed and the Pilot Monitoring didn’t verify and complied. Or, the PF commanded an appropriate setting and the PM moved the flap handle inadvertently to a lower setting. When the low speed cue or shaker started, they overreacted and buried the nose and lost an inordinate amount of altitude before recovering with a sharp pull up after having recovered airspeed. Or…….something completely different. Not sure we’ll ever hear the full story.