Originally Posted by
Bend alot
Cummon - plain to see!
There are still many secrets - after the first crash very little was disclosed and what was was in tongues in the FAA AD that lacked much information that could have been included.
Something like we expect more than 10 aircraft to crash over the next thirty years due to the MCAS system, based on known information relating to the first crash.
That report came out while Boeing was working on new software to describe what would happen if the full fleet, about 10X more planes, with unchanged software, were to fly. Same thing happens when a car recall is made; but the predicted result never happens because most cars get the recall done and the rest get taken out of service for some other reason. Since 100% of the planes were intended to get the 'recall' done to update the software the report was a gross, though necessary, exaggeration.
What information available now was not in the preliminary Lion Air report that made a difference? The Emergency Airworthiness Directive and associated AD does not leave much to the imagination, and anyone flying a Max should have read that preliminary accident report as if their life depended on it. In addition Boeing issued their own guidance directly to Max operators, with further details, such as that it operates only in flaps-up flight. They also issued a separate bulletin, number TBC 19, that described the 10 second run and then retrigger on any trim change with a 5 second delay.
The only secret that is left is that if the maximum velocity is exceeded with the plane far out of trim that the trim wheels are too hard to turn. But if the initial guidance is used, the plane is never out of trim and never outside the velocity envelope, so planning for that is unexpected.
I'd say it was up to every operator to carefully examine all the data about a crash involving their same type equipment and understand whether their training and other preparations were sufficient to deal with the situation. Had that happened the difficulty in using the trim wheels might have been exposed; certainly Mentour Pilot did his part and CP Bernd Kai von Hoesslin seems to have fought hard to do so as well, but it didn't seem to occur to Max operators to push back and go public with any flaws in the published documentation.