Originally Posted by
LeadSled
Megan,
Whilst I don'r have the quotes to hand, several articles in Aviation Week and Space Technology, which have been exhaustively covering the issue, have mentioned same. They never received any publicity at the time, because the crews involved just ran the uncommended stab trim checklist, ...
Having had some time to work through your claim I can now say pretty much unequivocally that your recollection is most assuredly mistaken.
First, I systematically worked through every Aviation Week and Space Technology article on the B737 MAX MCAS saga. None of them mentioned a US crew ever having dealt with an erroneous MCAS activation, much less having dealt with same by running the Boeing recommended Runaway Stabilizer NNC.
In order to validate my review I contacted the editorial staff at Aviation Week and Space Technology and I was placed in touch with the MAX coverage leader at the magazine. He stated in unequivocal fashion,
'I can tell you with certainty that I have no knowledge of any other erroneous MCAS activation in line operations anywhere in the world besides the two fatal accident sequences, and certainly have not written about one.'
I also contacted lead writers from a number of other US publications to see if they were aware of any reporting of any US crews having dealt with any erroneous MCAS activations. The response was uniformly negative. A typical response was as follows,
'The author is mistaken. There have been no activations of MCAS except on Lion Air (both on the flight before the crash flight and the crash flight) and on Ethiopian Airlines.'
I suggest (once again) that you are confusing reporting of one US MAX crew that had experienced an unusual nose down movement during the climb out and another that had experienced a climb performance degradation during the climb out. Neither of those incidents was MCAS-related; the former occurred with the autopilot engaged and the latter was an autothrottle issue. In neither case was any NNC actioned.