megan,
Bergerie1 has kindly responded and I would agree with the assessment regarding simulators. The sim can produce very sharp "responses", including vibration, rapid changes in yaw, pitch etc., engine or tail scrapes and hard landings. On "dry" accident reports, it is impossible to write in a report on behalf of someone else who may or may not be alive, "what it was like". There is a long history of striving for factual reporting which has led to remarkable advances in data-capture & gathering. This one goal enables investigators to get as close to what happened and why so changes, improvements and validations of design, standard operating procedures, regulations etc., can reasonably be made. The science of human-factors acknowledges startle as a factor in behaviour but in the abstract. It's all quite dry for a good reason.
Sailvi767, re your comment: "
The Southwest aircraft yawed and rolled because the engine suffered a uncontained catastrophic failure causing extensive cowling damage that dramatically increased airframe drag. Even given it was at a high thrust level and the aerodynamic drag it was easily controllable. That’s a very different scenario than what we know about China Eastern.".
Yes, agree. I believe that's essentially what I said in the post you have quoted:
The SW B737 engines would have been in climb thrust, not cruise thrust. Thrust produced by the engines for the climb is greater than that required in cruise so loss of a higher level of thrust would certainly be noticeable to the crew and the airplane would respond more firmly to the assymetric thrust.
The report paragraph you quote states that the First Officer had the aircraft under control, returning the bank angle from 41° to 5° within 6 seconds. That was the point in my post - engine failure will cause yaw but in all ordinary, (uncomplicated) circumstances, is controllable whether on takeoff, climb, cruise, descent and approach. The event is practised in the simulator every six months or so...There is no observable reason to compare either of the above events with the China Eastern accident.