Originally Posted by
The Bullwinkle
9.2 seconds is a pretty long time.
Try hanging by your balls for that long!
I certainly think a B737 trim wheel trimming continuously for 9.2 seconds would get my attention!
In isolation, yes, with a heap of commotion going on around you, where it only begins
after you retract the flaps with the stick shaker going off and warning flags everywhere, would it be so clear cut? Particularly if you counter trim and the MCAS pauses for 5 seconds before slowly applying the nose down trim again. Remember, at this point in time you don't even know a MCAS exists.
Not only that, as you increase airspeed the nose down effect of the previous controllable mis-trimmed stab that has been ratcheted in overwhelms your physical strength to pitch up due to the airload on the control column. The worst possible thing you could do at that point would be to use the stab trim cutout switches? Why, you now have a severely mis-trimmed stab and no electric trim to recover it quickly, the only way to correct that is through tens-of-turns of the manual trim wheel with you and your mate against a high airload.
I don't think this was a simply or easy scenario to handle.
See my post on this over at R&N Ethiopian thread post
#443.