Would take a fairly skilled pilot to fly an airliner around using top rudder. Don’t think I’d agree with the idea for a trim runaway!
Think this was muted to AA pilots in the 90’s though dealing with upset recovery.
Captain Warren Vanderburgh at American (most famous for his 'Children of the Magenta Line' lecture) indeed promoted the Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program in the 1990's. It advocated the aggressive use of rudder in upset recovery. I questioned the wisdom of this technique in a widebody airliner but we got the required sim training and checked the box.
In 2001 an A306 AA587 was departing JFK and got some wake turbulence from a 747 ahead. The FO did some rapid rudder kicks and the vertical stab sheared off the plane.
From the NTSB accident report:
7. The first officer had a tendency to overreact to wake turbulence by taking unnecessary actions, including making excessive control inputs.
8. The American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program ground school training encouraged pilots to use rudder to assist with roll control during recovery from upsets, including wake turbulence.
9. The American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program excessive bank angle simulator exercise could have caused the first officer to have an unrealistic and exaggerated view of the effects of wake turbulence; erroneously associate wake turbulence encounters with the need for aggressive roll upset recovery techniques; and develop control strategies that would produce a much different, and potentially surprising and confusing, response if performed during flight.
3.2 Probable Cause The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the vertical stabilizer as a result of the loads beyond ultimate design that were created by the first officer’s unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs. Contributing to these rudder pedal inputs were characteristics of the Airbus A300-600 rudder system design and elements of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program.