Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
Very senior and experienced? He was the youngest CA at Ethiopian. Was 29 and had been at the company 10 yrs, which means he came out of their academy as a 19 yr old ab-initio also a 200 hr pilot whose career was babysitting the autopilot as FO for the most part of a decade and then upgraded Nov 2017. And the FO was a new academy graduate with 200 some hours total.
Sorry, but crew experience here definitely needs to be looked at. Now if there’s some hidden flaw in the MAX that has yet to come to light, the crew will be vindicated. But if this is yet again a plane where MMACS activated and was a tug n pull war the entire time without touching the electric power cutoff switches for the stab, then it’s a very sad and repeated event that shouldn’t have happened.
FWIW, I had dinner with a friend who flew for Ethiopian. He had trained the Captain and flown extensively with him on the 767 when he was a new FO coming up through the ranks. My friend said the Captain was extremely competent and had very good skills. Best guess is that the Captain had an armful of yoke pulling back withall his strength. The 200 hour FO likely froze up and was zero assistance.