Just getting caught up after a long day of family stuff.
First I want to thank the individuals who had kind words, or otherwise expressed positive thoughts about my post from last night. After putting it out there I was torn, worried that I had made a mistake- I now see I did not.
Second- 737 Driver and others bring up really valid points and if/where we see things differently it isn't in the idea that the system failed completely. I would argue that putting a kid with less than 300 hours in the right seat of any transport category aircraft is near malpractice, and should said aircraft hit the ground in an uncontrolled dive blaming that kid is not only unfair, it is downright obscene. When I shared what I did last night it wasn't to expiate the guilt of the crews, but instead to try and get people to realize that "blaming" people who are no longer here to defend themselves is a bit disingenuous, and equally it distracts us from the very real root causes of the two incidents.
There is one huge difference between my position and that expressed most recently by 737 Driver, and that is to the responsibility for the outcome of what happened. Note that I say responsibility and not blame. After reviewing the technical and other data in great detail I am confident that responsibility lies solely with one party, as aided and abetted by another. Once the dominoes had been lined up the outcome was basically assured as it was only a matter of time.
Specifically: Boeing designed and placed into service an airplane with an active control system that had unilateral control over the horizontal stabilizer, with enough authority to place the airplane in an unrecoverable state if just a single component failed. Further this system gave no indication to the pilots that it was operating, or when malfunctioning that it was operating in error. Additionally this system, which was created solely to increase the amount of force required to pitch up the aircraft at high AOA used the most critical part of the airframe to do this minimal task, instead of using a passive system that had no control authority.
The result of this sad effort was a system that, if it failed, would basically try to kill the pilot and everyone on board. I say again: MCAS will try to kill everyone on board if it fails.
I simply cannot recall (but am inviting others here to fill in the blanks if you can) another system on a transport category aircraft with a failure mode that defaulted to "I'm going to try to fly the airplane into the ground. If you line up all the dots and pull two switches at the right moment I will let you live. Otherwise you die... Oh, and BTW I'm also going to fail concurrently with three or four other systems, which actually will alert you to their issues, unlike me, who will sit here quietly winding your trim forward until you get to the point where you cannot wind it back. Sorry about that!!" (It's also worth noting here that the Emergency AD that was put out only gave instruction on what was essentially an enhanced trim runaway. There is no actual way (that I have seen) for a pilot to actually determine if MCAS is malfunctioning. At best you are to stop the resultant (trim runaway) and remain in ignorance over the state of MCAS. WTF?? A system with complete authority over the horizontal stab and you have no way of knowing anything about it. Failure modes, operational status, errors, nothing. Just "If the airplane is trimming down (for whatever reason) and you don't want it to pull the console switches." Really??)
These incidents, indeed the entirety of MCAS' existence are a failure of corporate responsibility aided and abetted by a complete abrogation of regulatory responsibility. All in the pursuit of profits for shareholders.
We can blame the previous Lion Air Crew and maintenance for a lot. We can find fault with the performance of the crews, and we will. But in the end, the only entity who both could have designed a safe airplane, and who not only failed but by all appearances worked to conceal their failure through omission, was Boeing. And the agency that looked the other way was the FAA.
Those are the responsible parties, and that is what I hope people will look carefully at. It starts with the airplane. Build a safe one and operators will still find a way to muck things up, and crews will still make mistakes. But step one, the most important step, is build an effing safe airplane.
Warm regards,
dce