1 hour ago, Garys said:

Except for the lion captain, the others had very little experience on type.

I cannot say with any authority if pilot time in type would have had a bearing on the outcome. Many simulator trials conducted after these two accidents concluded that the situation encountered by both flight crews would have created a very high workload (chaos) environment...as stated by experienced in-type rated pilots who had advance knowledge of the outcome of the post crash simulator tests.

As mentioned previously, neither flight had sufficient altitude to recover from an uncommanded nose down attitude created by the rapid elevator movement. (Less than 6,000 ft altitude above ground for both accidents...in addition to the high density altitude experienced by the Ethiopian 302 flight.)

The time required to manually move the elevator wheel back to a more stable flight condition...once recognized as the cause for pitch down, was longer than time to impact.

The 94% N1 thrust setting is a "red-herring" considering the pilots were experiencing an active stick shaker (perceived stall)...IMHO.

These two highly scrutinized accidents were investigated by multiple agencies in multiple countries with experienced investigators with the objective to investigate both cause and factors. 

The fact remains, the Max fleet was grounded for an extended period due to a poor engineering design of the MCAS system.

RIP to the victims (and surviving families) of both of these accidents.

And to add to the discussion, smearing the flight crews was a conscious attempt to deflect blame by Boeing...the dirty rats. 

https://youtu.be/LkIiqYgwq8o

 

1 hour ago, Garys said:

Did they crash? And if so why did they land safely? 

We are straying off the topic (the criminal case the OP refers to is about Boeing's reaction to the crashes, not the crashes themselves).

But pilot training is only part of the story.  Most (not all) crashes are due to pilot error in some form or another, several high-profile accidents were the fault of well-trained and highly experienced pilots.  Of course not everyone is so blessed (either with training or natural ability), and even the best can have an off-day in a highly unforgiving environment, but the incredibly low accident rate despite the fallible wetware in the cockpit is a testament to the dedication of aircraft engineers in plugging as many holes as they can.  It is sad to see those efforts vitiated through an arbitrary re-allocation of failure severity, or a decision on whether a non-normal manufacturing operation requires a post-inspection or not.

To return to the case in question, the MAX as launched (not as initially designed) was an accident waiting to happen.  The accidents may have happened to anyone, but of course were more likely to happen to those least able to react correctly when the aircraft let them down. If other pilots experienced and correctly responded to the fault (as did other Lion Air pilots on the day before the accident), I'm sure they weren't happy about it and wouldn't be thrilled to continue flying an aircraft with a propensity to dive for the ground, even if they knew how to recover it.   But of course they didn't know about the design flaw and considered it a one-off, everything OK.  Until it suddenly wasn't. 

 

 

 

NEW Boeing Never Told Airlines THIS About the 737 MAX! (youtube.com)

One Boeing whistleblower attends the memorial for another. The ‘air capital’ is on-edge (msn.com)