HI Folks Its Yanrair here again. Just for info. I have flown the B737 several variants over twenty + years, and, have flown it in Manual Reversion with only a 24 v battery powering the plane. IT IS A MECHANICAL AIRCRAFT WITH COMPUTERISED OVERLAYS AND IT FLIES WITHOUT THEM. Actually very well.
The pilot is connected to the main controls directly with a wonderful thing called Fly By Wire - stainless steel wire 12mm thick! Not an amp or a volt in sight.
It is the only modern aircraft that can still do this. And that is one of its greatest strengths the in my view.
I flew many times as a certified flight tester on the 737 on behalf of XXX. Now, the point being missed here in hundreds of posts is that it is focusing on technical issues to do with MACS. And is becoming terribly geeky and academic about flight control laws and computers. It is nor focussing on the primary cause of why a crash was not avoided even given some technical issues. If you can fly a 737 with literally nothing working but a little 24 v battery - and the MAX is as far as I know no different, how come these two crashed? All you do on a 737, and not to be too technical - we used to say, if you utter the words 'what the f!!**! is it doing now?' ( ie Don't understand why plane is behaving the way it is and you don't like it) then turn off the autopilot, switch off the 'Jesus' switches (STAB TRIM) and fly manually straight and level until you have found out what is wrong.
OK, like Sully, I am a little older than some of the newer pilots, but perhaps this is where we should be looking? Not at a spurious input by a computer that could have been over-ridden. There is a massive attempt after every accident to muddy the waters so as to avoid legal issues and distribute the blame elsewhere. Which can be very sad if it doesn't get to the root cause.
In case you think that if it's not the plane, then it must be the pilots, that is not necessarily the case. A pilot is the end product of a massive training program and it is the quality of that training program that delivers the pilots.
Hope this helps to focus us a little more away from algorithms and more towards a possible cause - human factors.
Cheers - I enjoy this thread and am amazed at the in depth technical knowledge of many contributors.
It is just that most crashes, like the Everglades which was caused by poor airmanship and a faulty light bulb, are not that complicated.