The crew that saved the situation described the problem as the STS running the wrong way, possibly a huge clue as to how the human mind interpreted what was happening (rather than a trim runaway).
Which rather vindicates Boeing's position on this; they reacted exactly as Boeing intended by identifying it as an STS runaway (which most assuredly
is a runaway trim event) and dealt with it by using the correct pre-existing technique.
And as such, why is it really so necessary to inform pilots of this system? There is no specific control over it, just the generic runaway trim procedure. Surely telling people about systems they have no specific influence over is merely muddying the waters? If it presents itself as failure event X which is dealt with by checklist Y does anyone need to know that it could be system A or A.1 at fault, when both are addressed by the same checklist, show effectively the same symptoms and actually
are components of the same system?
That, I am sure, was Boeing's rationale and though I'm not 100% comfortable with it I'm certainly not condemning it in the absolute and fundamental way some others are.
Boeing just failed to explore what would happen if the single input to MCAS failed causing it to repeatedly trigger when not wanted.
I
very much doubt that could be the case. Single input failures would be top of the list to explore if the system only had one input. I think suggesting otherwise is being far too simplistic in automatically assuming gross incompetence where there really is no evidence of it. I read somewhere they spent 205 hours test-flying MCAS. What do you suppose they were looking at in all that time? That single-input failures hadn't occurred to anyone? No one at all? That is simply preposterous.
Boeing's big 'mistake' was to underestimate the public and to some extent the industry's interpretation of two failures due almost exclusively to bad handling and incorrect procedures that they could hardly have anticipated. At least, Boeing thought they could hardly have been anticipated at the time, and I doubt (m)any of us would have thought otherwise either before these accidents had we known about the system. Their mistake was to underestimate the amount and volume of criticism that would unexpectedly come their way because crews, maintenance and at least one airline screwed up in spades and the world retrospectively devined faults therefrom in Boeing that no one had thought were faults before and in a vindictive and vitriolic way unprecedented in the history of aviation.
Caught out by the 'told you so' all-seeing retrospective 'wisdom' of the internet more than anyting else.
I'm not saying they're whiter than white, just some light-ish shade grey a very long way from the midnight black some others are portraying.
We just received a company memo (after over a year of flying the NEO) that is has a “Rotation Mode” to prevent tail strike. Nothing was mentioned in the manual.........
Where are the howls of outrage over this 'cynical corporate cover-up' then, if adding automatic systems and not telling is so iniquitous?
Or could it be this falls into the same category as MCAS before the accidents? It's not hurt anyone so no one is outraged? (not suggesting this is an exact parallel but appears a similar concept). I expect Airbus' view on this was very similar to Boeing's on MCAS though; it is a sub-system of something else and failures in it can be identified and grouped under a common, pre-existing drill and as you have no control over it's operation what is the point of confusing people with knowledge of something they can't affect independently.