[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

*The flight recorder shows that the pilots neglected to fly the airplane by reducing throttle (airspeed steadily increased to 500 knots, twice the Vmo for the 737 Max at under 10,000 feet. No competent pilot would have allowed the plane to exceed even 300 knots. Because of neglect of rudimentary flying skills, this plane exceeded 500 knots. Indeed, overspeed alarms at high volume were sounding throughout the entire last half of this 10 minute flight. The throttles were never touched.

Can you point where, during the time the pilots had control of the plane, did they exceed 500 kts?




Also, if you watched the video I posted above, you see that in a simulator at 300kts it takes some force to move the manual trim and at 340kts it becomes extremely hard to use the manual trim.


Seen as the video has been deleted from vimeo, here is a transcript:

C: We have an IAS disagree.
C: So, IAS disagree memory items.
F: Autopilot if engaged, disengage.
C: Disengaged!
F: Autothrottle if engaged, disengage.
C: Disengaged!
F: Flight directors - Both up
F: With flaps up established a flight path 4 degrees and 75% N1.
C: So, 75% N1.
F: We have 77, 76,...
C: A little bit less...
F: And, there you go.
C: 4 degrees.
F: 4 degrees.

C: So I am trying to establish this now.
F: Check!
F: We are descending...?
F: We probably... Are you feeling troubled with...
F :Any trouble with the flight control?
C: Yeah, I'm trying to trim it but...
C: It continues to trim against me when I'm trimming
C: So state the malfunction, please.
F: Yeah, this doesn't look right. Looks like uh...
F: How do you feel the stabilizer, the trim system?
F: Can you control it?
C: I'm trimming it. It is responding but...
F: It's a runaway stabilizer, if you agree?
C: For every time that I trim backward, it keeps trimming forward.
F: It's trimming forward. Yeah, it's runaway stabilizer.
C: So, runaway stabilizer memory items...
C: And i'm trying to keep this thing at 4 degrees.
F: Control column, hold firmly.
C: I am... [CAPT is holding the yoke firmly with both hands]
F: Autopilot - if engaged, disengage.
C: It's disengaged.
F: Autothrottle - if engaged, disengage.
C: It's..., if you can disengage it for me, make sure that it's disengaged.
F: It's disengaged.
F: And, do you feel that the failure stop?
F: Negative?
C: No, it's still moving.
F: Stab trim cutoff switches to cutoff.
F: OK. It stops. It looks like it stops.
C: You can see now I'm using almost full back pressure here.
F: Exactly.
C: How many degrees nose down?
F: We have 4 units nose down now
C: 4 units nose down?
F: Yup.
C: OK, I'm struggling.
C: I'm actually using almost my full force to keep the aircraft level here.
F: Do you want me to help you?
C: What I would like to do.
C: Just for the sake of exercise, can you trim this forward? [to simulate MCAS trim AND]
C: See if we can reach even zero nose down.
C: And see if I can even hold it.

[FO is trying to crank the trim wheel to reach zero nose down, simulating MCAS AND]

C: So, now we are doing this just as an exercise!
C: Do not try this at home.
C: This...
C: We are at 300 knots now.
F: I'm fighting.
C: I'm sttrugling to to keep this aircraft flying.
F: My god! [FO surprised at how hard it is to trim further nose down]
C: Yeah, the thing is with higher speed the force on the stabilizer will be higher and higher as well.
C: So it becomes almost impossible to move it.
C: So we are now at about 3 degrees.
F: Yup. [FO still tries to continue trimming nose down, the wheels is so difficult to spin]
C: We're still about 3 degrees away from full nose down trim.
C: And I am using everything that I have. [CAPT still holding on to his yoke with both hands]
F: My God ! [the trim wheel barely move for the down trim]
C: This is realistic guys.
C: This is how much of effort it would take to trim the stabilizer at this kind of speed.
C: Umph... [Capt is still trying to hold on to his yoke with his hands]
C: I'm just in control of it, though. But it's getting harder and harder.
C: And remember we're still 2.5 degrees away...
F: My God! [FO still struggles to spin the refused-to-be-spun trim wheel]
C: It's not possible, is it?
C: All right, we stop at that.

C: The reason that we have to try...
C: The reason we have to trim this manually is because the normal trim system wouldn't do this, OK.
C: It would require manual trim to get it away from this.
C: That's fine.
C: Trim it backward. [This time to illustrate the effort to trim the nose back up after "MCAS" brought the AC further nose down]
C: Trim it backward as you can.
F: Oh my God! I couldn't... [FO can't spin the wheel to trim up]
C: OK.
C: Eh...
C: Juan, press the red button! [CAPT called the sim operator...]
C: Press the red button now. [to stop the sim session]
C: This is at 340 knots.
C: And the trim is at...It's still at almost 2.5 degrees.
F: Yeah, 2.5 degrees.

What the transcript doesn't convey is that Mentour Pilot has to basically hug the yoke to keep it in control below 340kts and with not as much AND trim as the Ethiopian flight had.