I have seen things in the simulator that in real life you would not believe it could happen - especially with experienced pilots. In fact if someone wrote a book about the quite frightening lapses of flying "skill" seen in the simulator it would probably plunge the airline industry into despair as passengers head for other means of transport after reading the book. "Thinks - not a bad idea - might make a buck or two with the book!"
Two examples: Experienced captain fails to notice his ADI had jammed during a reversal turn in a holding pattern. This in a 737-200 sim IMC. He continues to apply wheel pressure in an attempt to "force" the ADI to come good, meanwhile ignoring or not noticing comparitor lights. The aircrft is rolled beyond the vertical and the nose drops until with a startled Asian oath he looks at the correctly functioning standby ADI and calls "Standby ADI failure". He then proceeds to pull the fast erection button to level flight. Needless to say we crashed. All this time the F/O with his 250 hours said exactly nothing while watching open mouthed at his own perfectly functional ADI.
Second. On take off in low vis, the captain failed to rotate at VR and eventually went off the end of the runway at around 190 knots still on the ground. Why? The F/O had been quietly instructed to call 80 knots as per SOP but to "forget" to call V1 and VR.
The object of the exercise was to ensure the captain rotated on his own ASI readings and not to act purely on a VR call from the PNF. Because invariably a VR call coincides with the other pilot also reaching VR, there is an oft seen tendency to rely on the PNF call of "rotate" as the initiation action. If someone omits to call "Rotate" it should make no difference. But here it did and that is not the first time I have observed this blind reliance on a support call before a specific action is taken.
In both examples given, the captains had over 10,000 hours and both F/O's were new with barely 250 hours CPL. And that is only two of hundreds of similar style examples I have seen in many years of simulator instruction on the 737. I can quite see how the Turkish Airlines accident could evolve with a minor problem with an autothrottle, causing jaws to drop and stunned mullet disbelieving looks and finally lack of corrective action in time to stop a crash.