Let me put that more clearly then. The aircraft is what it is (all are) but whether you can Handle what it is depends, among other things, on your training. That's why they installed MCAS: so the airplane wouldn't feel any different than the NG; so Boeing could market it as a no-type-training-required airplane.
That great sailor of the skies, aircraft designer and journalist Peter Garrison is quoted below as saying that placing powerful engines further forward on the half-century-old 737 concept was "
destabilizing in the sense that the more nose-up it is, the bigger the forces tending to make it more nose-up.” I assume he's also referring to lift created by the nacelles, though he doesn't mention that here (beware of incomplete quotations).
So my question, as clearly as I can word it, is: Suppose Boeing had never devised MCAS and merely required pilot training to prepare crews for the Different Pitch Characteristics of this new 737 version. Would there then have been anything inherently more challenging about flying the MAX than the NG or other versions?
Because a lot of press coverage at least implies that the MAX, without MCAS, would be a trifle Stall-Happy.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...th-saving.html