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This is the story of flybe flight 046. The story of flight 046 starts on the cold morning of 12th december 2002. At about 2 am on that the the BAE 146 was de-iced for the first time that winter season. On this day the plane would be making a few shuttles back and forth between birmingham and belfast city. The first shuttle between the two cities was scheduled at 6:55 am and the first three flights went off without a hitch. The plane was back at belfast by 11:45 am and as the plane waited at the stands the airport was hit with some snow and sleet. The pilots had a quick discussion among themselves about the need to de-ice the airplane as they couldnt find snow or ice settling on their airplane or the planes near them. In fact not a whole lot of pilots were opting to have their planes decided in the time that flight 046 was on the ground, only one plane requested to be de-iced in that particular time frame. At 12:40 am the flight 046 was pushed back from the stands and as they were pushing back from the stands the crew did a flight control check to make sure that all the control surfaces were moving as they should. Better to know about a problem on the ground than when youre going down the runway at massive speeds right. Just as a precaution the crew held the control column at the fully aft position for about 25 seconds so that any water that had accumulated in the elevator could drain out. This was standard procedure. With everything looking good they taxied to the runway. Once on the runway the 4 engines on the BAE 146 were pushed to max power and then they were off, liftoff was at 12:52 pm and the jet soared into the skies of Birmingham bound for belfast. The captain kept the plane under manual control till they hit about 3000 feet and then the autopilot was turned on as the plane turned towards belfast. ATC wanted the pilots to keep climbing and they knew that theyd have to cut through some icy weather and so the piots turned on the planes anti icing systems to prevent any ice buildup that might cause problems for them down the road. As thye climbed the captain noticed something strange, the plane was oscillating ever so slightly. Now the BAE 146 was known to oscillate a bit but this was different. He noticed that the oscillations were worse when he used the autopilot to manage the vertical profile of the plane in the pitch or the speed mode but when he used the pitch mode it wasnt as bad. But this wasnt too much of a concern as they closed in on 24000 feet, most of these problem worked themselves out without much intervention. They then got an alert that let them know that they were 1000 feet of their target altitude. The plane should start to level off at any moment, but it didnt, they kept waiting for the autopilot to level the plane off but instead it pitched up a bit more and continued to climb. Knowing that something was wrong the captain disengaged the autopilot in an attempt to manually level the plane and that is when all hell broke loose. The captain suddenly had a plane that wanted to violently pitch up. He instinctively pushed the nose of the plane down but that wasnt enough, he used the switches on his control column to push the nose of the plane down in an attempt to get the plane under control. It worked, maybe a little too well. Now the plane was diving, he pulled back on the yoke. The controls were so heavy that the captain asked the first officer to help him out by pulling back on the yoke. Two men were now struggling to pull this plane out of a dive. As they pulled with all their might the control columns suddenly snapped all the way back sending the plane into another violent pitch up. The whole plane shook as it climbed again. The pilots quickly brought the jet under control. The whole ordeal had left the cabin in a mess. Two of the three cabin crew members were standing when all of this happened and they had fallen down. One cabin crew member had a sprained ankle and the other one had a broken leg. A few passengers also had a few head injuries. With the injured being treated by one of the passengers onboard who happened to be a doctor, they