I doubt it's the fact that they're American flying American planes as egregious accidents happen even in those sorts of scenarios (cf. Air France 447, French pi

I doubt it's the fact that they're American flying American planes as egregious accidents happen even in those sorts of scenarios (cf. Air France 447, French pilots, French plane, French carrier). There's the NY Times Magazine article that reminded everyone of the word 'airmanship' [1] although it wasn't terribly well-received [2], [3] by some other pilots. If you don't want to read all those, basically pilots in richer countries might be more likely to also be private pilots and more familiar with how an aircraft 'feels' that translates to a better sense of what's happening in larger aircraft. Combine a lack of that in poorer countries with the dumpster fire of Boeing's choices, crap replacement parts, and 'limited' training regimens and you have a fatal error chain forged. The criticisms focus on the idea that heroic pilots who could recognize and avoid the situation probably aren't the norm. Further, there's often prejudice against pilots from developing countries even when they are competent; neither of these excuse the systemic failure and getting to the conclusion of "but for the pilots the crashes wouldn't have happened" is somewhere between insulting and reductive. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c... [2]: https://medium.com/@elanhead/the-limits-of-william-langewiesches-airmanship-52546f20ec9a https://medium.com/@elanhead/the-limits-of-william-langewies... [3]: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/explosive-new-york-times-story-lays-blame-for-boeing-737-max-crashes/ https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/explosive-new-york-times-st...