Originally Posted by
Takwis
I have not seen anything stating that the MCAS paid any attention to pilot input. The length of the MCAS trimming appears to be solely determined by Mach and altitude. Lower altitude, close to ten seconds. Nice try on blaming the pilots again, though.
The pilots of neither airplane got anywhere close to a stall...and in fact were pulling with all their might because the 'mountain' (rising terrain, ocean) wasn't budging.
Strike two.
It responds to trim switch inputs, from the pilots. Not only does it stop immediately, it resets. Had the pilots let the trim switches alone MCAS would have run once and stopped out of trim. Had they over trimmed ANU, then MCAS would have brought the trim back to nominal. Much like someone coming across a cute bear cub and going to cuddle it, they did not realize what they were provoking.
The discussion was for what MCAS was designed to do when the AoA system was working correctly.
MCAS should also be dependent on AoA - which it was doing in the accident aircraft. The amount of trim is dynamic pressure dependent so there's that, but it should gradually apply trim AND as the AoA increases and stop if the AoA stops increasing rather than running continuously for no reason. Again, under the conditions it was designed for. Since the AoA was not decreasing, MCAS ran until the timer ran out.