Originally Posted by
Tomaski
As I've said before, despite changes along the way the 737 is rooted in a 50-year old design. Baked into that design are some assumptions regarding pilot training, experience and proficiency that are probably no longer valid. Boeing, the FAA, and the airlines all tried to pretend that this wasn't the case as they evolved training according to very mechanical and procedure heavy philosophy and found creative ways to put lower experience pilots in the cockpit. It worked fine until it didn't.
Not convinced that a more experienced pilot would not have been equally overwhelmed by the vagaries of the MAX setup, with switches that no longer work the way they used to and an unknown control actuator inserting itself forcibly into the piloting space.