One thing I am hearing is that the anti-stall system, new on the 737 Max may have malfunctioned due to erroneous readings from an A of A input which forced the nose down, and the pilots may have not been properly trained as to how to over ride they system. Boeing says all the info on the system is in the AFM but I sometimes wonder about the training level of some of these far flung airlines.
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Me too, you would think this would be top of the list when it came to training with most carriers after Lion Air and they would all be running simulator scenarios during recurrent training for everyone. Unlike previous models, this version seems to have a stick pusher system.
How about this for pure speculation. For some reason (say angle of attack sensor malfunction) aircraft thinks it's about to stall and starts pushing and trimming nose down. Crew says no way and starts pulling nose up. AP keeps trimming nose down and eventually the stabilizer overrides the ailerons and she pitches nose down and goes in like a dart.
Airbus has had stall prevention systems in their fly by wire aircraft for years but the 737 is not fly by wire. Former versions can be flown in manual reversion with no hydraulic boost at all. It's like driving a dump truck with no power steering but it works. You wonder what the problem is here or if there even is a problem.