I tossed in my commercial licence 40 years ago for a rewarding and exciting career in finance and IT but flying was always in my blood so I have always been interested in aviation. In this 737 Max crash issue something seems totally wrong to me. Both here in Pprune and in other media I have see a number of times where it has been inferred that this is pilot error as a MCAS fault is like trim runaway and fixing that is a memory item and takes 15 secs. However if I understand it correctly with runaway trim when you go to trim nose up the automation keeps on trimming more nose up even though the pilot has stopped trimming. In this situation it is the exact opposite the pilot trims up and the automation pushes the nose down. But I cannot see where people have focused on this critical difference. I would have thought in a crisis situation which was the case in these two crashes the last thing you would train your pilots to do would be tho take actions contrary (or in this case opposite to) to the symptoms being experienced. The people including some people presented in the media as experts who say that this is the same or similar to trim runaway seem to be missing the point that it is the exact opposite and therefore totally confusing. Who is missing the point here? Me or the experts?
And for those who wonder how I could give up flying for a business career. I am now long retired but I think I was unsuitable. I would have been totally bored as a pilot and therefore eventually potentially unsafe. I had a career where nearly every day was different, regular crisis to keep my attention, lots of mentally challenging problems to solve, and where I got to be the rule maker and breaker rather than the follower.