B737 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument
Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew Diverted; Flight Crew Returned To Departure Airport; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Aircraft
Preflight; taxi; and takeoff roll occurred without incident. Shortly after rotation; the Captain asked me to check my yoke trim as his had quit working. My yoke trim switch was also not working. It also appeared that the autopilot trim was not working. We verified that the trim cutout switches were in the proper position. We leveled at 5000 feet; manually trimmed the aircraft; and informed Departure that we would need a few minutes of vectoring to address an issue. After referring to the QRH; we contacted operations to confer with maintenance to see if a cycling of the Stabilizer Trim circuit breaker would be appropriate in this emergency circumstance. Departure referred us to [maintenance] so we sent an ACARs message asking the same question. We also utilized the Call Me function of the ACARs to speak with dispatch and [maintenance]. After 5 or so minutes dispatch responded with a frequency (131.17 I believe) and we attempted to contact dispatch and [maintenance] verbally. We could hear dispatch but apparently they could not hear us; so we called operations and were informed that they had dispatch on the phone and then we relayed communications back and forth from that point in that manner. We asked again about the possibility of a circuit breaker cycling. We located the breaker in question and after verifying that it was the correct breaker and getting authorization to cycle it; we cycled the breaker and the electric stabilizer trim function recovered. By this point we didn't have enough fuel to continue to [our destination] so we completed the appropriate approach checklists; had dispatch change the destination back to [the origin airport] and returned for a normal landing. We submitted a write up using the Electronic Log Book; maintenance ran an operations check which showed no issues and a new Maintenance Release Document (MRD) was issued. The aircraft was redispatched; refueled and we continued on with no further incidents.
No overweight landing was accomplished.
Boeing 737 flight crew reported their electric elevator trim system failed after takeoff. They ran the checklist and returned to land at departure airport using the manual trim instead.