Originally Posted by
BF263533
I am sure that in the various lawsuits simulator evidence will be produced to get to the bottom of the question of whether theEthiopian Airlines plane could have been saved.
The incident Lion Air flight, which landed safely, showed us that both accident flights could have ended successfully. The key is keeping the trim from reaching a full nose-down position as well as keeping the airspeed in control. Once you have the stabilizer in the full nose-down position it is going to be difficult to bring it back manually; even more so at excessive airspeeds.
The manual trim wheels each have a fold-out handle to provide good grip and leverage. The two wheels are installed so that the two handles (Captain's and First Officer's) are mounted 90° of rotation apart. This provides that at least one pilot has good leverage at any point in the wheel's rotation. In a situation where airloads make it difficult to rotate the wheel, this design allows both pilots to work together to turn the wheel with at least one always having good leverage.
Again, the key is not allowing the runaway, regardless of cause, to get you into that full nose-down stabilizer position. This is exactly what the crew of the Lion Air incident flight did and what the Captain of the Lion Air accident flight did through 21 unscheduled MCAS activations. In the simulator trials in the report, the crews started with the stabilizers in the full nose-down position. Those trials showed that, even then, the situation is recoverable. Recover from that situation is difficult and requires a high degree of crew coordinated.