Originally Posted by
HundredPercentPlease
How did he know he was going to have an MCAS event? He was dealing with a stall warner that shouldn't have been warning.
Not sure what you mean by a warning that shouldn't have been a warning. As to the question why the Captain should have at least considered the possibility of a MCAS event, then I should ask in return why would the Captain be so unaware of the circumstances surrounding Lion Air 610? Lot's of information was in circulation regarding MCAS, it's operating parameters, and the things one would expect to see in case of a AOA-malfunction after this accident. Some here have even suggested that the fear of this being another Lion Air type event may have been one of the things that caused the Captain's brain to go up and locked. I'll grant the possibility that Ethiopian Airlines may have done a piss poor job of passing the information along, and perhaps the Captain did not have the inclination or resources to research it himself. However, that still leaves us with the fact that crew was faced first with an AOA failure that was handled poorly which then set them up for a runaway trim event that was handled worse.
I would avoid making assumptions about the skills of the crews. In Europe it's easy to do too - we hear incompetent sounding fat cigar chewing fools who don't know that you can have a flight level of 90, but we try to remember that judging ability by nationality or assumed education is very, very wrong.
I am not judging the crew by nationality or education. I am judging them by the smoking hole they left at the abrupt termination of their flight.