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Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Crash (bloomberg.com)
As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit. Bloomberg reports: That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia's investigation. The next day, under command of a different crew facing what investigators said was an identical malfunction, the jetliner crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 aboard.
The previously undisclosed detail on the earlier Lion Air flight represents a new clue in the mystery of how some 737 Max pilots faced with the malfunction have been able to avert disaster while the others lost control of their planes and crashed. The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn't contained in Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee's Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn't previously been reported. The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to the people familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize. Further reading: Flawed Analysis, Failed Oversight: How Boeing, FAA Certified the Suspect 737 MAX Flight Control System.
The previously undisclosed detail on the earlier Lion Air flight represents a new clue in the mystery of how some 737 Max pilots faced with the malfunction have been able to avert disaster while the others lost control of their planes and crashed. The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn't contained in Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee's Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn't previously been reported. The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to the people familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize. Further reading: Flawed Analysis, Failed Oversight: How Boeing, FAA Certified the Suspect 737 MAX Flight Control System.
We just don't know how to use the search button anymore
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/lion-air-crash-pilot-on-previous-flight-made-distress-call-before-continuing-to-fly/news-story/7fa1bd3b49f4dbe76444f27cc52bca41
Date: Nov 2, 2018
What's remarkable in the Lion Air flight is that the company didn't ground the plane until the angle-of-attack sensor problem was resolved.
Boeing specifically and purposely left any mention of the new systems out of the difference training course that is required to be certified to fly the new 737.
Unfortunately, because of the similarity of the 737 Max to the older 737, two aircrews apparently assumed the new plane operated the same as the old one, and they apparently didn't follow the new checklist (likely didn't realize the new checklist differed) to clear up the problem. Resulting in two plane crashes. That would make it a training problem. But culpability still falls upon Boeing for not making it clear enough to pilots that the system had changed, and for designing a sensor which fails frequently enough to cause multiple incidents in only months of operation, and for designing a flight system which made it so difficult for the pilots to override a malfunctioning automated system.
They didn't tell pilots about this system, what it does, what happens if it fails and how to disable it. It simply wasn't in the pilot's manual, didn't make it into the training process.
How did the dead-head Lion Air pilot know how to save the plane??
Isn't in the summary, the dead-head pilot was simply going through a crisis checklist that all pilots should have memorized.
The class of problem, "runaway trim" can be caused by a few different systems malfunctioning. Most of those systems also exist on the old 737, but MCAS is new to the MAX and behaves a little differently, though if you figure that out, the remedial action is the same.