Originally Posted by
George Glass
Boeing is going to cop a lot of flak over this event but the fact remains that
- The aircraft shouldnt have been dispatched in the first place , and probably wouldnt have been anywhere in the US , Europe or Australia etc.
Possibly true, but largely irrelevant, because this could as well have happened on the first flight with the AoA problem.
- Disconnecting both stab. trim motors , as per the check-list , would have stopped the event cold.
There was no checklist for "unexpected MCAS trim", only for runaway trim, which in this case was not applicable, since the MCAS trim inputs could be stopped by pilot trim inputs. That is not runaway. Only Boeing's document and the subsequent EAD made the connection between this behaviour and the "runaway trim" checklist. Which is why using the wording "existing checklist" by Boeing is disingenuous. It's a weasel-word trying to imply that the pilots should have used the checklist, although it was not applicable before now.
Its an analogue aircraft,not fly by wire. Digital add-ons are nice to have,not must have.
That very much depends on how the "analogue" aircraft behaves without digital add-ons. It is likely that, because of the larger engine nacelles, it would have failed certification criteria for longitudinal static stability, so
some system was required to restore that stability.
Pilots are the first and last back-stop.
Disconnect and fly the the aircraft.
We don't know if or when they could have diagnosed the problem, not being informed about MCAS at all. Criticising pilot action with our hindsight of what went on is not helpful. It is important to take the "inside view" and try to imagine what they knew, what they saw and heard and what they could have deduced from that in the available time, with a high workload. Which is usually not very much. Even recreating this in the simulator is very different because you already know what is going to happen.
Cheers,
Bernd