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hoefla
NurseHolliday
I'm sure it would be more insightful than anything I could offer, but...
Lion Air Flight 610 had problems with it's Angle of Attack (AoA) sensors and the preliminary findings of the investigation were that this problem made the plane's anti-stall system think it was stalling and respond by repeatedly pushing the nose down. It seems the pilots were fighting this system when it crashed.
This system is called a "Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System" or (MCAS) and is new on the 737 Max. It's needed because the engines on this model are larger than on previous 737s - because the plane is longer and therefore larger - so they're in a different position: higher and further forward on the wing.
This destabilises the aircraft in pitch at higher angles of attack, so the MCAS system is needed to deal with it. In plainer English, the aircraft is aerodynamically unbalanced, so Boeing created a software fix to deal with it.
The problem was, Boeing hadn't told Lion Air about it, so Lion Air couldn't have told the pilots.
There are many who argue that making planes which can't fly well without needing software to compensate for what could be described as fundamental design issues isn't such a good idea. But if Boeing were going to do that they could at least have made sure this "feature" was well known to anyone flying the plane.
Nobody knows what caused the Ethiopian Airlines crash, but it dived into the ground shortly after takeoff in a manner worryingly similar to the Lion Air crash. So there is unsurprisingly speculation that the MCAS system could have been a factor.