Originally Posted by
Tomaski
I know what you're trying to say here, but you're actually making an argument that the pilots should have been trimming - to use your word - habitually every time that MCAS made a trim input opposite of what they wanted. We know that the Main Electric Trim stopped and countered MCAS every time it was used. Yet two of the pilots (Ethiopian Captain, Lion Air First Officer) failed to do so aggressively enough thus resulting in a loss of control. This is really one of the great mysteries surrounding these accidents.
Having to apply significant force to the control column to counter the out of trim stabilizer might make it difficult to use the thumb switches. For example the Ethiopian captain asked the FO to help him trim during the second MCAS activation, which many people here found puzzling. Maybe the pilot flying had to hold the control column like this:
Also, to help stall recovery, the elevator feel system makes it harder to pull the control column when the AoA is over a certain value, which could have made things even harder on the accident flights, compared to just being severely out of trim at high speed.