Garuda just cancelled 5 billion USD worth of 737 Max orders:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/22/business/boeing-737-max-garuda-cancel/index.html

The full link to that article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/21/ethiopian-pilots-raised-safety-concerns-years-before-fatal-crash-records-show/?utm_term=.e8e122b07dce

Maybe they just wanted to get out of the contract and this looked like a good away to do it?

From the article.
From research...................

30-Apr-2018
Indonesia domestic airline market: rapid growth, rivalry intensifies
https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/indonesia-domestic-airline-market-rapid-growth-rivalry-intensifies-410650
The long and short of it is, growth has been sporadic. The future is uneasy.

If this were a car it would be analogous to having a wheel side slip indicator in the dash along with a light that pops on if the two rear wheel sensors don't agree with each other enough.

Going further with my poor analogy, pretend your car is pulling to the right because one of the slip sensors is bad and the stability control is activating the ABS on the right front tire. Do you need to see the wheel slip angle or a warning light to tell you the sensors don't agree, or do you just pull the ABS fuse because the ABS is what is actually causing the car to pull to the right.

To go a little further, the previous cars you owned were all similar with 4 channel ABS an you trained in the car on a race track and on your mental checklist is what to do if an ABS sensor goes bad triggering ABS on one wheel - The old737 NG. Now you have a new car but you don't know it has stability control, the 737 Max 8/9 and the ABS triggers oddly. What is your first thought?

Boeing marketed this plane as something that only needed 2-3 hours of ground training but included a system that apparently very few if any pilots were aware of.

I had to go to CA last month, was up in the mountains, Yosemite area.
Coming down the mountain its cold, hovering near freezing, raining, just miserable.
The rental car was all over the place, felt almost like it was either hydroplaning or hitting patches of black ice, almost.

Fought with it for an hour till I got to a lower altitude where it was warmer and dry but the thing is still driving the same way and finally the light bulb went off.

Whenever I have the room I will use up the entire road, drive in two lanes, whatever is the natural line.

Turns out the rental car had lane departure assist, if it detects you crossing the line it counter steers. No indication it had that feature and no indication it had been enabled.

Despite 40 years of driving experience I spent a stressful hour fighting the car, which was only doing what it was supposed to be doing, because I was not aware it was supposed to be doing what it was doing.

Found the toggle and turned that **** off.

MCAS was designed to make the Max feel the same in its flight characteristics as the NG so there would be minimal differences in the aircraft handling qualities as far as the pilot was concerned specifically so there would not have to be type specific training.

To apply it to your lane departure case, the car would be activly trying to drive you off the road even though you are trained to drive in the center all the time. But you were trained how to disconnect the electric power steering in previous cars in case it acted up even though the previous did not have lane departure. It doesn't matter what system is causing the malfunction, the end result is you pull power to the control that is responsible for the movement.

Aside from that, the point I was trying to make, if there is a sensor mismatch would a warning light tell you what system to turn off?

Maybe, if you were aware the system was there to begin with.

With respect to the car, some indicator that a system was active would have helped. Cars with TCS indicate when it's enabled / disabled.

Which I guess is the real point, not knowing it was there.

If you knew what you were doing. Here's the airworthiness directive issued by the FAA after the Lion Air crash:

https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/83ec7f95f3e5bfbd8625833e0070a070/$FILE/2018-23-51_Emergency.pdf

Since the Ethiopian captain had not been in a 737 MAX sim, would he have known what to do had he those extra instruments?

Since there was so much news about the Lion Air crash, should he have not know to turn the electronic trim off?

I think Boeing was stupid to rely on one sensor when there is already redundancy available. I think they should have mentioned the new planes had stability control, but the pilots should know how to turn off the stab trim regardless of which system is triggering the stab trim.

On thing keeps sticking in my head with the Ethiopian crash. The transponder cut off close to 9000' altitude.

No, not really. Auto-trim systems have been a "thing" on the 737 for a very long time. Both STS (speed trim) and MTS (Mach trim). The MCAS system on the newer MAX variants is basically like STS 2.0. While I agree that all pilots/airlines should be made aware of even minor changes to flight control systems, the protocol for dealing with a faulty MCAS system has (ultimately) remained unchanged.

Further, I would hope that ANY 737 driver would be an "observant pilot" and be able to deal with an issue for which the procedure is a mandated memory-item.

Further still, The A320NEO has had it's own share of problems, including multiple in-flight engine failures. Not to mention serious additional maintenance issues that have resulted in a high "out of service" (grounding) rate.

Ask Lufthansa how they are liking their recent NEOs deliveries...

Yeah, but you don't see Airbus pilots riding a stall into the water. Oh wait.

Anyone can allow a plane to crash if they panic. Some pilots are natural fliers, others know only how to deal with things based on rote memorization. If it falls outside the bounds of what they have memorized they fall apart. Remember the old adage about C students still becoming doctors? Pilots too.

I don't recall the exact number but I think the crash site was at an elevation over 8,000 ft.

Well that could explain it.

Interesting theory.

https://leehamnews.com/2019/03/22/bjorns-corner-the-ethiopian-airlines-flight-302-crash-part-2/

It is nice read but it is not like compressibility is new thing. it is a known factor on all airframes. The real question IMHO is how MCAS got certified in the first place.

This is also an interesting read (albeit a tad jingoistic here and there):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1249KS8xtIDKb5SxgpeFI6AD-PSC6nFA5/view

That was a software mistake. It should have been two out of two voting instead on one out of two voting. The idea behind the warning light was that if the two disagreed, the light would come on. I do not think Boeing knew they had programmed one out of two voting.

I thought it was one out of one voting for MCAS. I think on some of the older 737 models they used the left side sensor for part of the systems and the right for others and only both for a limited number for some reason.