Originally Posted by
Bleve
I don’t fly the 737 Max, but after doing a bit of ‘what-if-ing’, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I were a Max pilot and had stick shaker on take-off, I would not fully retract the flaps. I would retract to Flaps 1. My experience on other Boeing’s (767 & 744) is that Flaps 1 provides the best manoeuvre margin to the stall and in the 737 Max would prevent MCAS doing it’s (evil) thing.
That's what I learned from LionAir, except that I would have left the flaps at 5 and adopted a pitch attitude of 10 degrees, confirmed that the stick shaker was false, checked for IAS disagree, and set 80% N1 (terrain permitting), flight directors and autothrottle off. Climb above a safe altitude and then carefully run the Airspeed Unreliable checklist, which would identify correct speed on the RHS. Engage autopilot B as per the checklist and return to land. Don't retract flaps. MCAS won't activate and stab trim cutout switches can remain in normal.
Now, I concluded that from the comfort of my armchair AFTER the Lion Air accident, so that if it happened to me, I would know what to do.
The Ethiopian crew obviously didn't, but neither did Boeing.
Mind you, I AM adopting a Boeing procedure here (the Airspeed Unreliable checklist) - It's just that I'm being choosey about which Boeing procedure to adopt and how, and using some additional system knowledge which we didn't have prior to the Lion Air report (i.e. flaps stops MCAS!).