[QUOTE]
Originally Posted by
yoko1
I am also qualified on the 737, so I’m familiar with the system and procedures. Whoever said to use the cutout switches without regard to either a published procedure or before attempting to neutralize the trim was wrong - just plain wrong. Perhaps in the old days when pilots were expected to have a greater knowledge of the systems would such a divergence been acceptable. Not so much anymore.
I don’t really see the crew errors as being a case of the pilots personally being at fault, but rather continued evidence that airlines around the world (including, sadly, mine) continue to underinvest in their pilots, by some combination of accepting ridiculously low experience (i.e. the ET302 First Officer) and/or minimal training that is heavy on managing the automation and checking off boxes in the sim and light on managing the aircraft (to include proficiency in hand-flying) and preparation for unusual, out of the box situations.
As far as use of the trim cutout switches, we have to assume the ET crew was either following an established procedure or not. If they were attempting to accomplish the runaway stab procedure (the only one that I know of that uses the cutout switches), then they did it incorrectly leaving the aircraft in a grossly out of trim condition. If they were not following a published procedure and merely grasping at straws, then they were grasping at the wrong straw. The immediate remedy to the MCAS inputs was the yoke trim switch, not the trim cutout switch. Once the trim had been neutralized (or at least close), only then would it have been appropriate to disable all electric trim.
Totally agree on direction training is taking, a lot of 'check the tick box' and not a lot of 'what now" novel challenges.
This is likely not helped much by 'binary' simulator data that tend toward prepackaged scenarios and not as much freedom to go in and throw a random combinations of faults into the mix. This is my impression from comments here, I have no first hand knowledge on that.
On the stab trim runway when to hit the cutout switches may have changed along the way, the original 'most likely' trim runaway would be stuck switch/relay which would not be overridden by pilot trim input so focus was on stopping it quickly .
This from a prior post.
Quote:
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.