> The earlier crew faced an identical issue the day before, and it was only the deadhead pilot onboard who recognized the issue and suggested flipping the stab trim cut off. Out of 5 pilots (7 if we count the other crash), only one suggested the correct fix.

And there are two ways to look at that. One is to say "obviously this means that this failure mode is too hard to diagnose". Another is to say "holy shit Lion Air pilots are fucking incompetent, I'm never going to fly any sort of third world budget airline if any of them are like this".

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, of course.

> What the pilots did would have worked on the previous version of the plane, but not on the MAX.

And yet the checklist continues past that point, because guess what? The "control inputs disengage trim" component can also fail, and Boeing planned for that.