Yes. In part. The incident did occur with other pilots that landed safely, even completing their flight.
I presume you're referring to the Lion Air flights preceding the loss of Flight 610. Note that the AoA sensor issue on Lion Air 610, AoA data mismatch due to an incorrectly repaired AoA vane, was not the same as on Ethiopian Airlines Flight Flight 302 - presumed by NTSB to be complete loss of the AoA vane due to a birdstrike. What this means is all the crews involved, across the Lion Air flights that didn't crash, Lion Air 610, and particularly Ethiopian 302, will have encountered different patterns of MCAS activation depending on the precise set of AoAs experienced by the aircraft in the Lion Air cases and for Ethiopian 302 whatever AoA signals the AoA sensor deemed appropriate for not having a vane attached any more. Because the precise patterns of AoA inputs and MCAS activations will have differed, arguing that the initial Lion Air crews managed to avoid disaster, therefore Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian 302 should have been able to, strikes me as arguing from shaky foundations, particularly in the case of Ethiopian 302.
According to the NTSB's
System Safety and Certification Specialist's Report, the Boeing fault tree analysis for the Max flight controls considered erroneous MCAS activation to be a Major failure in Normal Flight, escalating to Hazardous in Operational Flight, and erroneous AoA data to be a Major failure in Normal Flight, escalating to Catastrophic in Operational Flight. The NTSB notes several errors in the fault tree (AND instead of OR combination of failure conditions) that meant AoA data mismatch was not specifically considered in the fault tree analysis, considered too unlikely/covered by other scenarios. If the onset of MCAS activation due to erroneous AoA input was sufficient to place the aircraft in the Operational Flight envelopes, then we have aircrews being asked to deal with a situation Boeing's own Safety Systems Analysis for the Max considered simultaneously Hazardous and Catastrophic, and having been placed there by a system they had not even been told existed. Asking for a perfect response from all crews in all situations (which effectively Boeing's redundancy planning did), strikes me as unreasonably optimistic.
Normal Flight Envelope : Generally associated with routine operational and/or prescribed conditions, either all engines operating or one engine inoperative.
Operational Flight Envelope : Generally associated with warning onset; outside the normal flight envelope
Limit Flight Envelope : Generally associated with airplane design limits or EFCS protection limits
AoA is a fundamental parameter in determining whether you're in Normal Flight Envelope, Operational Flight Envelope, or Limit Flight Envelope.
See AC 25-7D Flight Test Guide for Certification of Transport Category Airplanes
we need more DOJ in the industrial sector, a sadly deserted domain by justice departments across the world in the last 30 years
Historically, there was a deliberate, multi-national move* to exclude law enforcement from air accident investigations because their involvement and investigative techniques, particularly in countries with less enlightened policing practises, caused personnel to lawyer up and refuse to provide evidence due to perceived risks of prosecution. The result was accident investigations that never developed the information needed to reach a conclusion. Similar issues can be seen later with the advantages of CHIRPS vs historic non-confidential incident reporting systems. Going back to the old way of doing things would cause things to go backwards, rather than being an improvement. There is provision for that bar on access to be overriden by the judiciary, but only when
“their disclosure or use outweighs the likely adverse domestic and international impact such action may have on that or any future investigation” (Standard 5.12, Annex 13 of the Convention)
There's a comparatively recent case in the UK, the Shoreham Airshow disaster, where the police** sought access to AAIB materials and were specifically excluded from access to AAIB witness statements by the High Court: "In refusing to order the disclosure of witness statements obtained by the AAIB, Singh J, delivering the judgment of the Court, noted the significant chilling effect that the possibility of such disclosure would have on people called upon to provide candid accounts to AAIB investigators, as well as the unfairness involved in disclosing accounts given to the AAIB under their powers of compulsion to the police who, for good and well-established reasons, have no such powers of compulsion." Discussed
here.
* Aka the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation
** And then the Crown Prosecution Service, and then the Coroner - police given access to GoPro footage but not AAIB witness statements, CPS allowed to use GoPro footage in the trial, but circumstances specifically noted as unique, Coroner told they couldn't have the AAIB witness statements, specifically because of the danger of setting a precedent and damaging air accident investigations in general.
