Originally Posted by
pontifex
I have grown slightly cross eyed following the huge volume of posts concerning the tragic events with the 737 MAX. One item that seems to have been mentioned just once (or thereabouts) is that things only started to go pear shaped immediately following flap retraction. Surely the clue should have been obvious to any adequate pilot and the previous configuration restored. As far as I understand things that would have saved the day. I have done a fair amount of 737 work but that was back in the day when they worked like normal aeroplanes (737 200& 400) so I may be wrong. This principle, however, has saved my life twice and I don't pretend to be anything other than an average operator. Am I wrong?
AFAIK the captain was focused on the autopilot around the time of flaps retraction, and the co-pilot was the one who made the correct call to hit the trim cutoff switches. That should have saved them, if all the right procedures had been followed timeously. Unfortunately neither thought to reduce the airspeed, which could have unloaded the horizontal stabiliser and permitted manual trimming, until it was much too late for any further options.