Cessna pilot here-- I've never flown an aircraft with hydraulic controls. (Small planes use pushrods or cables to actuate the controls. It's all muscle power fo

Cessna pilot here-- I've never flown an aircraft with hydraulic controls. (Small planes use pushrods or cables to actuate the controls. It's all muscle power for us.) The physics of flight produce a very useful convenience: the amount of force needed to effect a particular degree of attitude change (e.g. a 10 degree bank) remains the same, regardless of speed. Planes up to the size of small jets (the Cessna Mustang, for instance) use fully manual controls with no power assistance. The Challenger is a bit bigger, but even after the remaining pressure in the hydraulic system completely dissipated, I doubt more than 30lbs of pressure would have been required to actuate the controls. And the rotational inertia of the turbines should have provided at least some assistance on top of that. (I have no idea what would have happened if an airliner lost both engines simultaneously in a stall.)