Originally Posted by
Stranger
How could that be? Power goes roughly with air density. Which drops quite fast with elevation. Additionally the lower stall speed limit goes up with altitude.
You're right. I just discussed this with an A320 driver and he set me straight. At that altitude a swept wing jet is flying so close to stall speed that an attempt to pitch up aggressively and convert speed to climb would risk a stall. I'm accustomed to a turboprop which has about 140 kts surplus above stall at high altitude. My bad.
It might hint at what happened with QZ8501.