Originally Posted by
Water pilot
If it was part of the right solution, it would not take 20 years to come up with a regulatory fix. It is in nobody's interest (except perhaps China's) to have this fleet remain grounded for a long time, assuming that it is basically a safe aircraft. It would help if the political situation were more normal, but aside from that everybody knows what is going on and what doc fixes are required for this "one time situation". That is much easier to process than regulations/specifications that are supposed to guide several decades of future development.
Water - what you're suggesting would be the exemption route (or possibly an Equivalent Level of Safety - ELOS) for the stick force gradient. The catch is that pretty much all the regulators (not just the FAA and EASA) need to agree that an exemption is the right thing to do. I was involved in a few partial exemptions, and they were such that everyone agreed it was probably the right thing to do (sometimes stick compliance with a regulation can actually make things worse). Although SOP is to initially certify with the FAA and EASA, countries not represented by those two still do their own assessment before approving it, and one of the things that pay special attention to are any Exemptions or ELOS in the cert basis - it's generally not a rubber stamp.
In the case of the MAX, there has been one lonely Canadian regulator who's suggested an exemption might be a better path than MCAS. I've yet to hear of any other regulators (even in Canada) agreeing with his assessment.