Originally Posted by
EDLB
I think that Unhook is right in a way, that Boeing installed a “poor mans” version of alpha floor protection in the 737 MAX. However without the redundancy and thorough safety analysis required for flight control surface operations.
One more time: MCAS is not there to correct/avoid stalls.
Only to force the pilot to pull a little bit harder to induce it than without it, but not more so than in a NG.
I think it is a very bad idea, but it's important to get facts straight, it's not a bad idea because they wanted to go all "airbus" about it suddenly.
Fundamentally it's a bad idea because we as humans cheated at solitaire, we created something that allows us to pass a rule that we wrote (pitch moment vs aoa curve test), without getting the good things that the rule is supposed to grant (pitch moment vs aoa at real life speed). And then the added complexity bit us, partly because no engineer is going to give very much thought to a system which is anyway useless in a real life scenario. It's kind of dieselgate all over, only poor man's version of it. And murderous.