Way back at the beginning of this thread I asked the following question of someone QUALIFIED to give me a definitive answer, maybe it was too early to be asking the question so now I'll post it again and please only respond if you ARE qualified to answer, that's to say have experience with the 737 MAX systems in the real world.
We have no ideas beyond some possibly educated guess-work as to what happened here but I do have a question that can be answered by someone with the relevant experience. As a 10,000 + hr career pilot I'm not exactly a newbie but have not had any experience with the latest sophisticated systems being introduced on modern aircraft.
Q. Is there something preventing pilots of these aircraft from simply hitting an autopilot 'disconnect' button, and then getting on with flying manually ? Not suggesting that this is relevant to this accident.
So, what I'm asking is, does modern technology prevent/resist/over-ride a pilot from flying an aircraft in the most basic sense once the autopilot system has been disconnected ? And I say again: I'm not suggesting that this is relevant to this particular accident.
