Not a 737 driver so I have no vested interest in defending my plane/livelihood. Also neither American nor European, so I could not care less about defending my "team". What I am is a frequent traveller who would prefer not to become a smoldering crater in the ground -- preferably not even if I am flying on a plane flown by the most poorly trained, least-skilled and most sleep-deprived (but properly licensed) pilot.
I've read this whole thread and then some, and thus far my reading of the facts of these incidents is as follows:
1. (Fact) Boeing was caught with their pants down by the A320neo and needed to come up with a quick 737 update with better fuel economy (i.e. with minimal engineering changes).
2. (Fact) Rather than produce a clean-sheet design or update the 737 undercarriage/wings to incorporate an extended main landing gear, Boeing extended the nose gear and bolted on larger engines by moving the engines forward relative to COG, in spite of the negative impact that this had on aircraft stability/handling.
3. (Fact) The 737 stabilizer has much greater vertical authority than the elevator (I have seen estimates of about 3x as much)
4. (Fact) Due to the enlarged and forward-positioned engines, the Max exhibits poor aerodynamic/flight handling characteristics (tendency to pitch up) at high AOA when approaching stall. As communicated by at least one purported Boeing engineer much further up this thread (post 1000 or thereabouts?), this tendency to pitch up is so extreme that elevator input alone would not have been sufficient to make the aircraft adequately controllable, hence why a stick pusher was considered and rejected.
5. (Speculated) For the same reason, once in a stall, the 737 Max is quite likely to be extremely difficult to bring back under control through normal control surface inputs, without the rapid application of an extreme amount of stab trim (i.e. by MCAS). (Has anyone flown a Max into a stall at MTOW/rear COG and would they be able to provide input on whether it is possible to bring it back under control without trim input/MCAS?)
6. (Fact) The FAA/other authorities require positive elevator feel at high AOA to provide stall protection.
7. (Fact) MCAS is designed to provide positive elevator feel at high AOA to meet regulator requirements.
8. (Fact, deduced from 6 and 7) MCAS provides stall protection.
9. (Fact) The certified limit of MCAS authority (one burst of 0.6 deg) was also not sufficient to make the aircraft adequately controllable at high AOA. Boeing increased MCAS authority to 2.5 degrees per cycle, with an unlimited number of allowed cycles, without informing regulators/obtaining certification.
10. (Fact) The FAA was so understaffed/feckless that they did not discover/were not made aware of this severe deviation from certification.
11. (Fact) Based on various pilot reports and according to archaic 737 manuals and flight training, past a certain limit that is inversely related to airspeed, manual authority over trim is impossible for pilots of less than super-human strength, so e trim is the only option available.
12. (Fact) Boeing shrunk the size of the Max trim wheel, reducing leverage and further increasing strength required to manually trim. They failed to inform regulators of this change.
13. (Fact, deduced from numbers 10 and 3) Under certain portions of the flight envelope, pilots lose all vertical authority without electric trim.
14. (Opinion) Based on its essentiality to maintaining vertical authority under all allowed portions of the flight envelope, electric trim should be considered a safety-critical component and should be subject to all of the requirements thereof (e.g. redundant computers, motors, etc.)
15. (Fact) Boeing redesigned the cutoff switches to make it impossible to disable MCAS without also disabling e trim. They then failed to describe these changes in the manual or provide this information to pilots.
16. (Unverified, but extremely likely) Based on the inconsistent application of upward electric trim by the pilots during the two accidents, something was likely preventing the pilots from continuously applying upward trim. If your life is flashing before your eyes and you are battling to get your aircraft to climb, your thumb is going to be glued to the trim switch, not making the bare minimum in small (and inconsistent) blip applications. As far as I know it has not been conclusively reported, but it appears that based on the trim traces that MCAS is in fact capable of overriding thumb trim and not the other way around, despite claims to the contrary.
17. (Speculation) Many have speculated that the electric trim motor is also incapable of controlling the stabilizer under certain portions of the flight envelope (e.g. high speed, extreme trim, opposing elevator). If this is true, then there are actually portions of the flight envelope in which pilots lose all vertical authority even if electric trim is operational.
18. (Opinion) If there are regions of the 737 flight envelope (e.g. extreme trim, opposing elevator) under which pilots lose vertical authority, the whole 737 fleet, both maxs and NGs (assuming that they are also affected by the same issue), should be grounded until such a time as trim deflection is mechanically limited to prevent entry into these uncontrollable regions of the flight envelope.
19. (Fact) Boeing did not advise pilots of the limits of manual trim authority or the need to e trim to neutral before cutting the trim switches.
20. (Fact) Boeing decided to base the activation of MCAS on a single AOA sensor (rather than making use of the two installed sensors) and a single computer, without even basic sanity checking.
21. (Fact) A large number of recent reports have identified safety-critical manufacturing defects and foreign object debris in recently-constructed Boeing aircraft as a result of lax manufacturing standards, and articles from yesterday indicate that a whistleblower reported to the FAA on April 5th that FOD had resulted in damage to Max AOA wiring in at least one instance.
22. (Fact) Boeing did not inform airlines or pilots about MCAS, did not include it in the manual, and did not provide any MCAS related training.
23. (Fact) Boeing chose not to provide an aural/visual MCAS activation warning.
24. (Fact) Boeing opted to sell the AOA indicator display as an optional extra rather than a built-in safety feature.
25. (Fact) Boeing disabled the AOA disagree warning for customers who did not purchase the optional AOA indicator display. Previous 737 models had functional AOA disagree warnings. As reported recently by the SWA pilots assoc, Boeing did not inform airlines/pilots of this change.
26. (Fact) Boeing did not make or arrange for the production of an adequate number of Max simulators, hence the extreme resistance to any changes that would require sim training.
27. (Fact) Pilots did not receive any information about MCAS or sim/flight training for dealing with a possible MCAS activation prior to these incidents (they did not even know that the system existed).
28. (Inferred based on events) The incident pilots were inadequately trained to handle and responded very poorly to MCAS activation incidents. (Note: is it the pilots' fault that they were inadequately trained on a system that they did not know existed on simulators that were not available?)
29. (Fact) After the Lion air accident, Boeing provided only the bare minimum in information regarding MCAS and refused to acknowledge any problem with the plane, placing the blame entirely on the dead pilots.
30. (Fact) After the Ethiopian accident, Boeing resisted efforts to ground the aircraft and refused to acknowledge any problem with the plane, again placing the blame entirely on the dead pilots.
31. (Fact) After the Ethiopian incident and following a meeting between Muilenburg and Trump, Trump's FAA stooge resisted requests to ground the Max.
32. (Fact) Only after foreign regulators began grounding the Max en masse did the FAA also follow suit and ground the Max.
33. (Fact) Boeing, as evidenced by Muilenburg's recent press conference, still refuses to acknowledge any problem with the plane, and continues to place blame solely on the dead pilots. Meanwhile they are working on a software "improvement" for MCAS, without any reports of hardware fixes in the works.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, Boeing has acted disgracefully in this situation and should be prosecuted criminally for manslaughter (perhaps this is an opportunity for Barr to prove that he is not a Trump stooge). Meanwhile the FAA has been completely compromised and corrupted by the kleptocracy that is taking over America. These are systemic failings rather than a one-off incident, and they raise the question of how many other similar failures remain lurking in the shadows due to negligent management practices and oversight in a country that is rapidly losing any respect for the rule of law. No outcome short of a complete (and transparent) overhaul of Boeing's safety culture, prosecution and incarceration of senior management, and possibly even a break-up of the company (e.g. splitting off commercial aviation from defense) will make me comfortable flying on any recently-produced Boeing metal. I'll be putting my money where my mouth is by exclusively booking Airbus until these changes are made. I'm not holding my breath, so it looks like I'll be flying Airbus for some time to come.