Which really under explains the situation. In reality the STAB TRIM CUTOUT must be switched to CUTOUT within 5 seconds of using the electronic stabilizer trim, or the MCAS will re-establish the forces.
Its been noted in previous discussions that while it would be difficult, the load can be overcome if both pilots were to operate the manual trim wheel at the same time.
Not that its a good situation to be in.
I haven't seen that noted anywhere, and have seen it theorized as impossible without motor assist, given their airspeed and with the elevator opposing. Got a link?
Excessive airloads on the stabilizer may require effort by both pilots to correct the mis-trim. In extreme cases it may be necessary to aerodynamically relieve the airloads to allow manual trimming. Accelerate or decelerate towards the in-trim speed while attempting to trim manually.
https://www.pilot18.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/B737NG_FC... page 312 (8.16)
It's also from a 20 year-old manual, and isn't present on newer manuals, and pilots haven't trained on it in decades. Not appropriate to expect pilots to know, and possibly not helpful here: the pilots were low altitude, so allowing the nose to drop even further (to relieve aerodynamic load) may have been deadly too.
Vne is where things start to get scary because it's usually based on flutter, which can catastrophically damage/destroy the aircraft in very short order.
The EAD/service bulletin doesn't talk about sufficient nose up trim or caution against performing the cutout with even a slight mistrim.
> And then they did not work the mechanical trim wheel hard enough to reset the residual nose down trim.
It's possible that aerodynamic load (of the stabilizer opposing the elevator) made it physically impossible to manually trim given any mistrim at the time the cutout happened, given the airspeed they had. And, the captain is pulling back on the yoke as hard as he can, so he's unavailable to let go of it and grab a trim wheel instead without immediately losing altitude.
> And, when they (against procedure) (apparently) turned the electric trim system back on
It seems sensible to assume -- and the report states -- that they did this because they found that manual trim was impossible in these circumstances.