It would appear there may be the POTENTIAL for a "differing of views" among the various regulatory staff on the question whether MCAS ever sees the light of day on a future MAX airframe. This may be the "fulcrum" which defines the future of this particular variant.
A manager at Canada’s aviation regulator believes that Boeing should remove software that played a role in two deadly crashes of its 737 Max before the plane is cleared to fly again, according to emails between global aviation regulators this week that were reviewed by The New York Times.
The Max has been grounded since March, days after a crash in Ethiopia. Together, the two accidents killed 346 people and have sent Boeing into a crisis. The company is working furiously to get the Max back in service with a fix to the software system, known as MCAS.
“The only way I see moving forward at this point, is that MCAS has to go,” the official, Jim Marko, the manager in aircraft integration and safety assessment at Transport Canada Civil Aviation, wrote in the email. He sent the email on Tuesday to officials at the Federal Aviation Administration, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency.
At least one F.A.A. employee shares his concerns, according to a separate email reviewed by The Times. Linh Le, a system safety engineer at the F.A.A., shared Mr. Marko’s message with others at the agency. He noted that the Canadian official believed that “MCAS introduces catastrophic hazards that weren’t there before,” that “it and the fix add too much complexity,” that “there have been many revisions to the software” and that “each was a band-aid.”
Mr. Le said he had similar misgivings about Boeing’s proposed fix for the Max. “I have held similar perspective (questioning the need for MCAS, at least from the system safety standpoint),” he said in the email to colleagues. It is unclear whether international regulators will take any action in response to Mr. Marko’s concerns.
Canadian Official Calls for Removal of Key Software From 737 Max