Ethiopian airliner down in Africa

[gums]

Salute!

Getting into some good "what if" and "there I was" stuff, and some of it should be of interest to the Boeing folks in the design shop as well as some FAA folks. As Mawtha would say, "it's a good thing".

- I am willing to buiy most here a beer if the design folks and fault tree analysis folks ever considered activation of MCAS at 400 ot 500 ft ( depends on your procedures for flaps and such, but remember that in most of my jets I just raised gear when having a positive rate of climb, and then flaps a few seconds later; Viper was together, as flaperons went up and down with the gear handle)

The doggone thing (MCAS) seemed to be geared to a medium or high altitude turning maneuver at "holding" airspeed/AoA. Can't help but feel they never envisioned it cranking in over 2 degrees of trim at low altitude and low mach with stall warning going and stick shaking and warning lights illuninated.

- Why change the trim cutout switch wiring? You know. One for HAL and the other for me seemed to be the standard from day one. That configuration would please many of the Chuck Yeager folks on this forum, and I agree with them. At least I know what I have to play/work with. That aspect of the flght controls is not a consideration in the later model Airbus, Raptor or Stubby ( F-35) flight controls because you need electric power to the actuators 100% of the time! Duuuhhhh? We had a serious power supply design defect in the early Vipers, and it took two or three crashes to figure it out. After that, walla! And for you millenium yutes, our early FLCS computers were analog chips, not digital. They were very robust when volts and amps went into la la land because they failed gracefully. Later digital FLCS boxes had a more robust power supply configuration, because when those puppies go west. it is all or nothing!
In all fairness, in my leading edge flap failure adventure I used the only flight control switch besides for the deep stall direct mode doofer - the flap switch. It allowed me to lock the opposing flap to keep a more predictable (?) configuration, LOL.

- As with most pilots here, I feel badly the crew did not pull the power back as the 610 crew did. With all that was going on, I cut them a little slack. There are two good lessons to be learned, though. 1) Aero forces on the stab can give you a major headache if you are going fast with a trim problem, and 2) you should try to follow the same takeoff-to-climb sequence you did a thousand times. Remember to pull back power to climb or low altitude maneuvering power and pitch.

There many other lessons and design considerations to be had with these two crashes. I just hope the 737 pilots here are reading our whines and theories and war stories, then fold some scenarios into their personal procedures.

Gums sends...