Originally Posted by
LowObservable
Yes, but they quite clearly became less flyable by the second, as long as the crews failed to do the right thing.
I would suggest that you have this backwards. The longer the pilots flew through this malfunction (i.e. by applying trim with the yoke switch to counteract MCAS), the easier it was to understand what was going on. After about the 20th or 30th time you have to put in nose up trim only to watch MCAS put in nose down trim, I think even the most minimally trained crew could figure out that perhaps turning off the trim cutout switches was the reasonable course of action. The first Lion Air crew got this right. The Captain of the second Lion Air got this right until he turned the aircraft over to his First Officer and mistakenly assumed that the FO would continue to offset the MCAS inputs. The Ethiopian flight seems to be the true anomaly with a Captain who was by all appearances uncomfortable with hand flying and an FO who really didn't have the experience to jump in there and assist the Captain.
The simple fact is that as automated aircraft and simulator training have proliferated, and as the number of hours required to enter the right seat has declined, air safety has improved.
While the overall safety stats has improved, crew errors are becoming an increasing factor in the accidents that do occur. Some of this is due to the same human factors that have been around since the Wright Brothers, but some can be attributable to an increasing reliance on automation as a substitute, as opposed to a compliment, to basic flying skills. The fact that Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority had no problem granting a 160-hour pilot a license to act as First Officer in a 737 ought to give everyone pause.