This 3rd pilot was probably able to figure out the issue due to clarity of mind to not having to fly the plane, pay attention to all the instrument gauges while things are going wrong, trying to diagnosis and correct the issue.
Seems like pilots are overburdened by so much automation, as alluded to by the famous "Children of the Magenta" video[0].
I don't get why the plane doesn't just say what it's doing, and why it's doing it, and have a big red button to put the plane into a safe-mode alternate law. 737s already say warnings like "BANK ANGLE", couldn't it just say "DANGEROUS CLIMB DETECTED, TRIMMING NOSE DOWN. PRESS RED BUTTON TO CANCEL."
This is grossly overstating the optional feature. As I understand it, "AOA disagree" is a single light near the AoA indicator itself. It's not an explanation, or even an alert. It's not where anyone would reasonably look when trying to diagnose an uncommanded flight control problem.
The North American airlines bought it and no others did. It was not described as a safety feature -- if it was it wouldn't be permissible to make it optional.
Even the current training does not tell pilots to know that an AoA disagree light is an emergency because it can cause the plane to enter an uncommanded nosedive via MCAS. I really don't think it's reasonable to expect the pilots to know things that Boeing is not even trying to tell them.
> The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights and hadn’t been properly repaired.
It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Lion Air couldn’t even maintain their planes properly; assuming an extra indicator would help would be charitable at best.
