Admiral Beez
Major
IDK about Ethiopian, but investigations of Lion Air show how the pilot farms would have eight or more trainees in the simulator to observe the two trainees at the controls. All of the trainees would run the same simulation program over and over again, so the eight chaps observing could easily foresee and plan for their time in the chair. There's a reason Lion Air isn't permitted to fly into western airspace. When your rigging the sim training and rushing pilots through their qualifications IDK if prominent inclusion of MCAS in the manual and QRH would have helped. But that was the point I think of MCAS, it's supposed to work with these third world pilots, where Boeing was aggressively selling the 737 since the system, not the pilot runs the ship. Had redundant sensors been mandatory instead of an optional upgrade this wouldn't have been an issue. Here in Canada, all four of our 737 operators (AC, Westjet, Sunwing and Air Transat) opted for the multiple sensors and thus never experienced the MCAS issue.The type of challenging drills that my friend Kathleen was subjected to in the 737-800 sim at American. (Including a single engine ILS to minimums at DCA with a runaway trim inside the FAF, a manual trim missed approach on one engine, then another single engine ILS to a landing on manual trim only.) Very busy cockpit. I'm guessing that sort of thing doesn't happen at outfits like Lion and Ethiopian.
I wonder if all the 737 Max now sitting in Seattle and elsewhere will need to be chopped up and recycled. Boeing might be demanding a taxpayer bailout, whilst its customers who already paid for their planes will be demanding credit on future buys or never looking at Boeing again.