Originally Posted by
Capn Bloggs
I agree ("fanciful" is a bit harsh though
). Rananim, the STS and the MCAS appear to be different. This 737 hit the water going very fast. The STS should have been trimming back. The MCAS, if the AoA was erroneously high, would have been trimming forward. The MCAS is only fitted to the Max.
I agree with your comments about the MCAS, I disagree that "fanciful" is unnecessarily harsh. Boeing knows what caused the crash and how their automated stabilizer trim systems contributed to that. That's why they published the Bulletin, which spawned the Emergency Airworthiness Directive. Boeing has delivered 200-ish MAX's They have delivered 7,000-ish NG's. Given that the Bulletin and Emergency AD are very clearly specific to the MAX's and not applicable to the NG's, only 2 possibilities exist:
1.) Boeing knows that the malfunction that caused the Lion Air Crash is something that could occur in all 7200 737 NGs and MAXs, but for reasons known only to themselves, limited the applicability of the Emergency Airworthiness Directive to the 200 MAXs, and not to the other 7,000 NGs whcih could also experience the same malfunction.
2.) Boeing, the designer and manufacturers of both the NGs and MAXs, has very good reasons for believing that the malfunction will only happen in the 200 MAXs and not in the 7,000 NGs in service.
I would say "fanciful" is a fairly restrained characterization of thinking which considers 1 to be more plausible than 2.