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by bronco21016 2777 days ago
Would runaway trim be the thing they were reacting to? It seems to me the trim was pitching down due to the design of the stall system. I’m imagining they were getting erroneous stall warnings due to the AOA sensor feeding bad data. If I’m in an aircraft and I’m getting stall warnings, stick shakers, and stick pushers I’m definitely not going to run runaway trim memory items.
1 comments

It's pretty likely that they weren't reacting to runaway trim; on that we agree.

The trim wheels are large, painted mostly black with alternating, offset white stripes (so the motion is quite visible), and have a very distinctive clacker on them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQirIH_DuAs

It's possible that the crew fought to keep the airplane in a basic attitude flying configuration for several minutes without ever noticing the trim in motion unexpectedly, but that seems unlikely, particularly when the act of holding the nose up to hold attitude was accompanied by increasing nose down trim.

Minor note: there is no stick pusher in the 73. Those tend to only be installed on T-tail aircraft. Synthetic elevator feel increases, but no pusher only a shaker.