[stevenhuang]

iirc the proper course of action for this failure condition was to perform manual cutoff of the stabilizer trim, which is considered a mandatory memory item for flying even normal Boeing 737s (non max)

basically, on runway stabilizer events, you must know to turn off the autopilot: https://www.johanpercherin.info/airline-pilot-training/boein...

apparently the differences in training have resulted in the lack of knowledge in this area for foreign pilots, which turned a recoverable failure into an irrecoverable one

disclosure I'm just going from memory from reading about 737 max analysis, there might be more to it than thi

Edit: as expected the situation is more nuanced, see here for elaboration on why even successfully performing stab trim cutoff may not have been sufficient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35769100