Hi all you Southwest guys/gals,
I was in the jumpseat the other day (Thank you!) and was startled by the FO's control check. I thought he was trying to fling the ailerons right off the wings. Are you taught to do the control check as fast as possible? Are your 737-700 built to withstand this kind control check? They must be, but it seemed really odd.

I'm in training and I don't recall anyone telling us to conduct the control check as fast as possible.

That's just Southwest standard, do everything really fast.

Must be a military thing.

haha since when is the military fast at ANYTHING?

Probably a guy that learned in Cessna's

Thanks to an accident years ago due to cross wired controls, AF control checks (At least the KC 135R and T-1A) take forever and must be accomplished with a crew chief watching to make sure the controls are moving properly.

While i was in the navy we just did it the Airline way.

I do the control check full range (I see some folks who do not) and I do it fairly abruptly...I want to ensure that any abrupt inputs I may to make in the air have already been tested on the ground. I have a friend (USCG) who was involved in the clean up of that AK thing off of LA, and I flew with plenty of folks who knew the crew on the mesa B-1900 that over-pitched at CLT...it gets to me a little bit, I don't take flight controls for granted.

Full range yes, abruptly NO. An abrupt control change on a flight control with no air load on it isn't proving anything, it's just poor airmanship and hard on the airplane.

The CLT crash would not have been avoided by a rull range control check, and I'm sure they probably did one. Judging a few inches of elevator stop bolt misplacement is virtually undetectable as they would have gone full forward to the 'stops.' The 'stops' were unfortunately not in the right place.

Not dogging on ya, just don't beat on your airplane because you think it will help predict flight control problems.

I thought the CLT thing was because of a part replaced "upside down" in the elevator? Bad diagrams by Raytheon? Same in HYA with Colgan. They pitched up, tried to trim "down", but were actually continuously trimming UP!
As far as Alaska, easy to Monday morning quarterback, but they kept dinking around with the jackscrew, and kinda hurt themselves (MX,Dispatch, pilots)?

Old control check saying on the 80: "Nuts and Knees!!"