raining for performance of these flights. Contributing to the causes of the accident were the inoperative stick shaker stall warning system and the ABX DC-8 flight training simulators inadequate fidelity in reproducing the airplanes stall characteristics. DISCUSSIONIn all the National Transportation Safety Board concluded there were twenty-three findings that directly contributed to this airplane accident. I will address the ones I feel carried the most impact where if the instance was removed the accident would have been prevented or the severity of it lessened.Starting with finding number 4. Some combination of airframe icing, flight control rigging, or other factors resulted in the greater-than-expected buffet onset speed; however, any effects of airframe icing or flight control rigging upon the stall speed of the accident airplane were minimal.Because the airplane had been operating at least intermittently in the cloud tops and below freezing air temperatures there was no definitive way to tell if this was a leading cause to the accident. Current weather conditions at that time were conducive to light-to-moderate icing for a brief period before the attempted stall maneuver. The aircrew's statements on the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) indicate they were aware of icing before starting the maneuver. The CVR also recorded comments indicating the airplane departed from the icing conditions sometime shortly after entering.The buffet and stall speeds also could have been affected by the rigging of the airplanes flap and aileron control surfaces. These control surfaces had been re-rigged prior to FEFs (functional evaluation flights) on December 21 and 22, 1996, as a routine part of the overhaul of the mishap aircraft. Part of the FEF stall series checks verifies that control surface rigging was proper by comparing calculated stick shaker activation and stall speeds to the airspeeds at which the airplane actually encountered these ev...