Following the Nov 6th 2018 release of the Boeing Bulletin regarding MCAS in the aftermath of the crash of the LionAir the airline did distribute the bulletin to their flight crew a number of days later following a reminder.
Ethiopian Airlines had been equipped with one Boeing 737-700 NG simulator only when the first MAX aircraft were put into service, the first 737-8 MAX simulator was put into service mid January 2019.
Only in March 2019 a trim runaway lesson was included in the NG and MAX training syllabus. Flight crew are scheduled to go through a simulator session every 6 months (as per industry standards), the accident flight crew may thus not yet have received training on a stabilizer trim runaway (in the NG or MAX Simulator).
The source added the B737 NG simulator was not able to reproduce different trim handling by both aircraft: on the NG aircraft automatic trim (e.g. by the SRS) could be counteracted by an (intuitive) elevator opposite control input (e.g. on a nose down trim
a nose up elevator input would stop and disable the autotrim system) unless a double failure was inserted by the sim instructor
whereas on the MAX the intuitive counter acting elevator input no longer stops the automatic trim in order to permit MCAS to work. The only means to disable automatic trim on the MAX is therefore the trim cutout switches (renamed PRI and B/U) below the throttle quadrant on the center console (same location as on the NG), which completely disables all electric trim (also via the trim switches at the controls) and leaves the crew with manual trim via the trim wheel only, so that crew needs to rotate the trim wheel nose up promptly to recover from a stabilizer nose down trim introduced by an automatic trim (e.g. by MCAS or other faults).
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