Originally Posted by
Albino
You need to go and read step 2 again. It wasn't completed, at any point after the MCAS AND.
One could argue that you can skip step 2 when the A/P is not engaged.
I don't think the runway stabilizer memory items cover all possible runway situations properly, especially when MCAS is involved. A step 2.5 asking you to try to bring the trim back to neutral using the thumb switches, before applying the cutoff switches, wouldn't hurt, in my opinion.
And having in mind that the current version of MCAS will re-activate in 5 seconds, it should also tell you to use the cutoff switches as soon as possible after you bring the trim to neutral, in under 5 seconds after your last electric trim use. With the new MCAS version that will hopefully no longer be needed.
There are plenty of things the accident crew could have done better, and they clearly made mistakes. I think using the cutoff switches before bringing the trim to neutral was one of their smallest mistakes, if you can even consider it a mistake.
Boeing and the FAA claiming, after the Lion Air crash, that the existing procedures for dealing with a runway stabilizer are sufficient to address the MCAS issues is a much larger mistake, in my opinion.
And the elephant in the room is that manual trimming with the trim wheels can be extremely hard, or even impossible to do, when you apply a lot of nose up elevator depending on the airspeed.
In addition to the MCAS fixes, I think this is one of the problems the FAA and Boeing need to address, not only for the MAX, but for previous models as well.
Unfortunately I don't see an easy solution for that particular problem. Some complex changes might be needed. For example an additional electric trim circuit and motor as a backup for the main one.