Originally Posted by
Flightcap
My guess is that the pilots found their efforts to manually move the trim wheel weren't working and they finally gave up on it, resorting to the only other tool they knew of that could move the stabilizer.
Of course their efforts weren't working. They had the long forgotten throttles locked in the forward position, driving the aircraft to and past VMO. They needed to SLOW DOWN - just like anyone else trying to deal with a runaway stab situation and requirements to use the manual trim wheels. That was the "tool" to which they need to resort - flying the aircraft. Yoke, throttles, pitch, power, CRM... basics. Turning a failed system back on was not the "only other tool".
It's amazing anyone here is actually claiming that it's understandable that a fully trained 737 crew of a national airline can ignore their airspeed during this event for 6 minutes. There's no excuse. None.