Even if the revised MCAS cannot act up again as it did on the crash flights, MAX pilots will still want to be comfortable with manual control of the stabilizer.
A 737 captain on a U.S. airline, who asked for anonymity to speak without permission from his employer, described his own extensive experience as a former test pilot of moving the tail manually.
He said that with the 737 tail at full nose-down position and at maximum design speed, it is “nigh impossible for a normal human to move the manual trim wheel in the nose up direction. The forces are too strong.”
Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and APA spokesman, recently replicated that flight situation in a simulator, deliberately inducing an MCAS-style nose-down pitch at high speed, though still within the normal flight range.
He was able to move the wheel only “a couple of inches, but not enough.”
Tajer said that if the MAX is pitched down toward the ground, it gathers speed all too easily.
“The 737 is a slippery airplane,” said Tajer. “When you put the nose down, it wants to accelerate very quickly.”
NG pilots may want to be comfortable about that, also.