They incorrectly counteracted the malfunctioning system 25 times. If they had followed the correct procedure for handling runaway stab trim, they would have only needed to respond once. It's a three-step procedure that takes just a few seconds - press the override button on the yoke, turn off the master switches for the stab trim automation, set the stab trim manually.

The Lion Air flight crew caused that crash because they lacked fundamental piloting skills. Like many low-cost carriers in middle-income countries, Lion Air have systematic problems with poor pilot training and supervision. The poor design of the MCAS system contributed to the crash, but any number of other system failures could have caused a similar accident if handled equally poorly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...

I'm not excusing Lion Air. I actually live in the region and everyone knows about their problems; I and many others refuse to fly with them. But that doesn't let Boeing off the hook at all. And I note you didn't mention Ethiopian air, who have a far better reputation.

I think a lot of us here are software developers. As such, we all know that if a user does the wrong thing once, that's their problem. If they do the wrong thing 25 times in a row - that's our problem. I don't care how good the pilots are, or what country they're from. If a software system silently activates, with no immediately obvious way to turn it off, and ends up killing hundreds of people - I blame the developer. Fail-deadly systems have no place in commercial aviation.

I don't want Boeing to go bankrupt, but I want them to hurt very badly from this. $25B of stock buybacks but they cut corners on this jet, to the cost of ~300 lives. This needs to cut right to their core and I'd be happy to see the entire C-suite and board fired.

> What's your argument?

I was replying to the argument that they had only 4-10 seconds. They had much more than that.

Which still was not enough, as the crash showed. The simple fact that neither the FAA nor EASA have yet cleared the 737 MAX for flight is a pretty good indicator that it was, indeed, the planes fault. I think the "human error" argument phase should be over by now.