Originally Posted by
tdracer
Posted about this on one of the countless other MAX threads, but it probably bears repeating.
Not too long ago I was at special event at the Museum of Flight - not only was I seated at a table with a bunch of current and retired Alaska Air pilots, during the cocktail hour I ran into a flight test pilot friend who'd been involved in the MAX development (Alaska is an all 737 operator - classics and NGs). To a man, they all agreed that if the stab tirm started doing something you didn't understand or like, the very first thing they'd do is turn it off and trim it manually. Hence the reason Boeing didn't treat MCAS as a flight critical system. However these were all older, high time experienced pilots
That being said, they also all agreed that no sim training for MCAS (or any of the other MAX differences) was a huge miss...
My bolding in above.
One of the criticisms I see of the ET crew is that they did not first trim with electric trim before using cutouts as hinted at in the Lion Air triggered emergency AD.
It is not clear whether lack of manual trim after cutout was due to lack of familiarity with the flip out handles or aero loads or both.
Something had to be happening in the period while electric trim was disabled, we don't know what since the CVR transcript has not been released.