Originally Posted by
pilotmike
How dreadfully inconvenient there was no knowledge (ensured by Boeing) of the existence of MCAS at the time of the 2 terrible crashes with hundreds of fatalities.
Mike, that's not quite true (I am splitting hairs a bit here).
The Lion Air Crash was what triggered the public awareness, and apparently awareness among those flying the 737MAX, of this MCAS "feature". So it was one crash that happened where there was no knowledge of the existence. That was tragic enough; that the pilots didn't even know what was malfunctioning as they tried for what, six minutes, to get control of their aircraft back.
What is to me the greater tragedy is that the crew (and their passengers) from ET were in a variety of ways set up by the entire global aviation system: manufacturers, operators, regulators. That systemic failure was the failure to provide a clear statement of "if this thing breaks down, this is what it looks like and this is what you do" to that crew.
If the system had done that, they'd most likely have had a tool to (1) recognize and (2) deal with that particular malfunction, one that comes from a spurious AoA indication/signal that then creates a movement of a primary flight control.
In five month's time, "what's it doing and what do I do about it?" had not had an answer spread to the entire Max fleet operators and pilots
effectively.
There are multiple links in that chain, and I'll not derail this discussion further.
Back to lurking.