Keith,
I’m going to have to respectfully stand by my statement. Both crews exhibited gross lack of systems knowledge and basic airmanship. First, Both crews had stick shaker activation at rotation and yet both crews retracted the flaps. WTH? If the airplane may be stalling, the LAST thing you would ever do is retract the flaps. With flaps extended MCAS will not activate. Secondly, numerous systems other than MCAS can cause a trim runaway (STS, or autopilot for example) and there is really no way to determine which system is causing the runaway. More importantly, it doesn’t matter. The response is the same- deactivate the trim system and trim manually. The response is not only a checklist item, but it is a MEMORY item. The first crew never accomplished this and the second crew did it too late. Yes, in the Ethiopian accident the airspeed was very high, because the engines were at TOGA during the entire event! They weren’t flying the airplane, they were just along for the ride after the airplane broke ground. The captain of the Lion Air flight figured out that he could just counter the MCAS activations by simply trimming the opposite direct each time MCAS activated. He did this 22 times! It was obvious he didn’t understand why the airplane kept trimming nose down, but he had it under control. Then gave the airplane to the FO WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT THING TRIM RUNNING AND! The kid made 1 insufficient ANU trim input and it was all over. Gross incompetence all around. Cheers, greg