Originally Posted by
GemDeveloper
I think the distressingly simple answer to that it is the folk who are moving money around in stock markets are of an age and disposition where they can assimilate a short exchange of eMails or texts but they have no interest in reading and understanding a 51 page technical report, despite it being written in clear and comprehensible language.
I think there is more to it than that. Most of the stuff in the JATR report was confirming what was already known or widely suspected, and therefore already priced in. The "test without MCAS" recommendation is probably being done anyway (as others have said) because with the new dual-sensor MCAS sensor failure will result in non-availability.
The chat logs on the other hand were new and potentially very damaging (in the lawsuits...) information, and then there was the spectacularly terse letter from the FAA in response. If the FAA thinks (with good reason IMO) Boeing is
still not being straight with it then we could be looking at further delay in return to flight, and hence substantially more costs all round - and none of that previously priced in.
Will the FAA and the other airworthiness authorities insist on flight tests that demonstrate the stalling and handling characteristic of the bare aeroplane? Or will it be shown that the aircraft design is essentially unstable, in which case it seems to me that it needs a full authority computerised system as is designed and developed for many modern military aircraft (e.g. the Typhoon), with all its built in redundancies and extensive flight testing and evaluation. And then grandfathering the certification of the 737 MAX looks more than a little suspect.
An "essentially unstable" civilian transport aircraft would (should) never get certified, fighter jets are a completely different ball game. Airbuses are not aerodynamically unstable, and the MAX almost certainly isn't either. The issue is almost certainly in meeting the stick force gradient requirements, how
bad it is we still don't (and may never) know. I
think it is also
possible that the MAX control feel could be simply adjusted so that the stick force requirements could all be met
without MCAS,
but then the MAX wouldn't feel anything like a (previous) 737 and therefore no common type rating so no way were they doing that.