The thing that was the most chilling to me was the fact that the last item on the memory checklist is to try and prevent the trim wheel from moving using physical force. At that point it almost seems like "well, you are probably going to die, but you might as well keep yourself busy in the process."
I thought the communication was really interesting. Air France Flight 447[1] crashed due to the pilot flying pulling back on the stick for over a minute while in a stall, overriding the command inputs of the pilot monitoring. The other pilots realized that the pilot flying had been pulling the stick back the entire time only a few seconds before impact, and at that point it was too late to recover. The transcripts from the cockpit voice recorder are pretty chilling.
That exact situation isn't exactly possible in a Boeing because the sticks are linked, but there were a several crashes in the modern era that occurred because of communication issues in the cockpit. Of course, in addition to better communication, we have systems like MCAS which are designed to prevent pilots from repeating the mistakes of AF447. In this case it obviously didn't work out that well.
I can’t watch the video at the moment, but I’m of the understanding that the manual wheel actually easily overpowers the electric trim motors—-that it is simple to stop them from spinning and not to difficult to manually spin them as required.
In the video there is a suggestion on how to hold the wheel without breaking your wrist, so I assume it's not too pleasant to do. They also manually spin the wheel and it looks quite hard and slow (the monitoring pilot alone, which is using his left hand, can barely do it; when the flying pilot helps him with his right hand things go better)
I doubt that there would ever be need to physically overcome the jackscrew motor (trim motor), as there is an electrical cutout switch in ready reach. The issue the GP discusses is when due to whatever reason the trim runs away (electrical or otherwise), the 737 has two physical wheels that the flight crew can turn, _OR CATCH_ while it is turning. That is like stopping a spinning bicycle wheel by grabbing it. It is physically dangerous to the crew member.
I wouldn't say "easily": at some point in the video the guy on the right tries to trim manually but fails -- it only starts working when the guy on the left starts helping him.
I thought the communication was really interesting. Air France Flight 447[1] crashed due to the pilot flying pulling back on the stick for over a minute while in a stall, overriding the command inputs of the pilot monitoring. The other pilots realized that the pilot flying had been pulling the stick back the entire time only a few seconds before impact, and at that point it was too late to recover. The transcripts from the cockpit voice recorder are pretty chilling.
That exact situation isn't exactly possible in a Boeing because the sticks are linked, but there were a several crashes in the modern era that occurred because of communication issues in the cockpit. Of course, in addition to better communication, we have systems like MCAS which are designed to prevent pilots from repeating the mistakes of AF447. In this case it obviously didn't work out that well.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
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