Originally Posted by
gums
In other words, the crew did not recognize what the problem was and kept trimming because every time they trimmed, the plane seemed to return to "normal".
A "malfunction that fixes itself." Red Flag.
The crew actions, even without knowing about MCAS, are an important part of this tragedy, but if things didn't break, they would not have had the opportunity to diagnose a new malfunction.
What besides (maybe) an AoA probe 'broke' in this case? Still unclear to me.
Diagnosing malfunctions is, when a problem has persisted for flight after flight, something for a
post maintenance check flight. (IMO) not a revenue flight. (Hence my question about MEL?)
So second to last flight did not identify the real problem because the "runaway trim" procedure seemed to have allowed a successful flight and a writeup.
But not an actual repair, it seems. So what is going on here: throwing parts in a problem, and hoping that fixes it? I'd hope the trouble shooting trees in the maintenance manuals would be a bit more expansive than that.
The accident flight would have been the same, and maybe next hop would be the tragedy.
Maybe. depends on what actually broke.