Originally Posted by
Water pilot
What does that have to do with this thread? This was not a case of the automatics failing and the pilots not knowing how to fly, it was a case of undesirable interference by the automatics during hand flight. The criteria being debated is how skillful should pilots be at responding to a design flaw and if it is safe for a manufacturer to know of the flaw and assume that pilots would all be that skillful.
One question should be whether the manufacturer was really aware of the “flaw” or even characterized it as such. If so, it would be unconscionable not to design it out. To have a known flaw and then presume pilots will find a some way to overcome it (without even telling them about it) is crazy. That is not engineering and it is not the Boeing of old.
I suspect that the combination of events following the particular malfunction of AOA sensor on MCAS was not foreseen, which I am afraid would be a flaw in the engineering. Regardless, now they know and they ought to do more than tweak the software. This failure mode was twice demonstrated to be catastrophic and the redesign must make it extremely improbable. Will they?