The pilots were able to stabilize the plane, inverted, for less than a minute (with a 9°pitch towards the ocean). Video of the flight as well as the cockpit voice recorder confirm this. While attempting to rotate (barrel roll) the plane upright they ran out of room and impacted the ocean.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which tragically crashed into the Pacific Ocean on January 31, 2000, was involved in an extremely harrowing struggle for control that lasted several minutes, but the plane was fully inverted (upside down) for approximately 81 seconds before impact. The flight suffered a catastrophic failure of the horizontal stabilizer's trim system due to a lack of lubrication on the "jackscrew" assembly. After the initial dive, the pilots remarkably regained some control, but the system failed completely, forcing the MD-83 into a final, inverted dive. Cockpit voice recordings revealed the immense courage of the pilots as they attempted to fly the aircraft upside down to regain lift—a maneuver almost impossible for a commercial jet. In 2026, this event remains a cornerstone of aviation safety studies, specifically regarding the "Swiss Cheese Model" of maintenance failures. The tragedy led to significantly stricter FAA regulations on the inspection intervals of critical flight control components to ensure that a similar "jackscrew" failure never occurs on a modern aircraft again.