Originally Posted by
Ian W
The implication of your post is that the 737 pilot is happy to accept a significantly out of trim aircraft.
What was being assumed is that an experienced pilot would not let the automatics whatever they were put the trim where they didn't want it.- so when the Stab Trim cutout occurred there would not be a large out of trim condition to wind back.
There is also a lot of confusion between 'manual trim' with the column electric trim switch and manual trim with the non-powered trim wheel.
What I was trying to point out is that the "greybeards" statement was that the first thing they would instinctively do when trim acted up for whatever reason was to hit the cutout switches then use the manual wheel to trim, not first attempt to correct the trim using thumb switches.
Up until MCAS probably the most likely cause of runaway trim was a HW failure of some sort such as stuck relay which the thumb switches might/might not override so would be logical to hit cutout as soon as possible before stab ran to the limits. Only takes seconds of runaway to get to a bad state.
An unanswered question is why the initial re-trim by ET pilot only removed about 1/2 of the MCAS trim, that and failure to manually trim after cutout are the final causes.