As someone who flew a Boeing plane for a long time, if it’s true they released a stick pusher (automatic trim) that would dump the nose,[1] couldn’t be overridden by pulling back on the stick as in previous versions of the aircraft,[2] but only by disconnecting the automatic trim then manually trimming the aircraft, was tied to only one AOA sensor, and then felt this was too much information for “pilots”.[3] Wow. Seems like engineers on the ground and business leaders making decisions that ended up costing lives. Pilot error seems like a scapegoat here. Even a well trained pilot on a bad day might not handle a nose down situation after takeoff well, especially when the intuitive solution of pulling back on the stick had been disabled.

While this may not be the cause of the most recent crash, the Lion crash alone seems to indicate a problem with Boeing and the FAA’s relationship. This probably extends to Airbus and other regulators as indicated in another comment about his or her carriers safety incidents tripling due to flying two aircraft of the same “type” but not really.[4] At a minimum the MCAS changes should have been communicated to pilots and indicates a process problem at Boeing with insufficient pilot involvement and too much engineering and business input. And the FAA probably needs to be much stricter in the training and documentation requirements between models.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/u-s-p...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19077371

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438607

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19376565