Originally Posted by
Albino
From the trace they blipped it a couple of times with one slightly larger correction before the cutouts were used. If i've got this wrong then I apologise but as I see it they retained full control of the stabilizer with electric trim at all times (apart from when they cut it out) and it would have overridden any MCAS AND command. After the initial AND command the aircraft is never put back into trim.
No, I agree, they didn't fully reverse the MCAS AND trim before using the cutout switches. I was just saying that they
did use the switches in the ANU direction, to reverse part of the trim applied by MCAS, not that they fully reversed it.
I can only guess why they didn't fully reverse the AND trim applied by MCAS. Maybe it was the fear of MCAS doing it again, so they hurried to use the cutout switches. Maybe it was the fear of being close to a stall, and didn't want to make any large adjustments in the ANU direction.
Also, the trim adjustment speed available to MCAS is higher than the speed available to the pilots, 0.27 units/s for MCAS vs 0.18 units/s for the thumb switches. So, if MCAS trims for 9 seconds AND, you would then need to trim with the thumb switches for 14 seconds in the ANU direction to fully reverse the 2.5 units of AND trim introduced by MCAS. Anything less than that, and you will lose the fight at some point.