The 8,000 hour Ethiopian Airlines Captain forgot to turn off the autothrottles when they started having problems with MCAS. All attempts to fix the stabilizer trim were thus attempted at takeoff power. Therefore, even though they did try to do the right thing and switch to manual, they were unable to control the stabilizer trim manually due to the plane traveling at 500 mph. They turned the autopilot back on to try to get back some control and used the yoke switch to cut off MCAS...for nine seconds, as designed. Whereupon the crew apparently lost concentration due to the crisis, MCAS came back on, it used the faulty sensor reading that had started the problems, and it dived the plane straight into the ground - still at full power.
Poor software design by Boeing, but the genesis of the accident was a boneheaded mistake by the flight crew that it is hard to imagine any American airline crew making. There is going to be a lot of finger pointing.
Turn it off and fly the jet manually. . .they did not do that. . .beyond their skill capability. . .if they had any air-sense or judgment. . .and auto-throttles being ignored by the flight crew is downright ignorant and unskilled.
“2,000” hrs? Was that 2,000 hours of the same hour repeated over and over again, and what were their certification qualifications to be rated in the aircraft.
Look, I have no loyalty towards Boeing, worked nearly 10-yrs with them and they are not into building jets that they know will fail. Build a jet that you know will fail is a sure way to get sued out of existence and lose the market. . .no airline wants to buy a jet that fails.
Several American pilots (prior to the crashes) were complaining about these planes and their concerns were dismissed.
Boeing was actually on their way to designing a whole new plane until they got scared by Airbus competition. So they just revamped their pre-existing 737 into this destructive piece of trash.
Also their new batches of military aircraft have also been experiencing kinks.
Thanks. Much obliged.
Juan has the best overview.