No, you need certification to be able to fly eact plane type, which equal to 6 months retraining. For this incident Boeing "forgot" to tell companies do not do what you usually do, as it doing what you do actually worsen the situation. Boeing released emergency notice after that incident, and data from black box showed that the pilot is doing precisely what they are used to do.
> do not do what you usually do, as it [...] worsen the situation
This sounds like the worst UI evolution. Could they not have come up with something that's more natural? I don't know anything about controls and procedures for commercial aircraft, but it is so complex that nothing is natural? Like listening to Formula1 team radio where the engineer tells the driver to set some cryptic mode in the steering wheel menu.
I wonder how much of a competitive advantage it would be to make easier/safer to fly commercial aircraft. It would be sad to hear that these are the results of great effort of that goal.
Yes. The newfangled plane had a new way for trim runaway to occur, but the action to take in the event of trim runaway shouldn't be (AFAICT) any different. They managed it on the previous flight.
Plane it self is legal to fly at that time.