Originally Posted by
Bergerie1
Perhaps MCAS was not needed to all on the 737Max. Patrick Ky of EASA has said that "they pushed the aircraft to its limits during stall tests, assessed the behaviour of the aircraft in failure scenarios, and confirmed that the aircraft is stable and has no tendency to pitch up even without MCAS."
From my reading of the Boeing email in the AirCurrent article, flight test data indicated that there was not sufficient warning to the pilot that one would be entering a stall condition. The issue thereby appears to not be one of control column feel but instead that the aircraft must provide tactile feedback that a stall is imminent. If this is the actual physical behavior of the aircraft than by all means MCAS would be required.
I always wondered why it took until flight test to identify the need to use MCAS in low speed flight. This observed behavior would explain why wind tunnel data and simulation would not have predicted this beforehand.
With regards to the criminal citation, my understanding of the law is that even if failure to comply is an honest mistake, e.g. Forkner did not know of the decision to change functionality, that it would still be criminally prosecutable. This would explain why the Company is criminally liable but not the individual. It would also explain why the criminal penalty was not as severe in only ~$200 million.
Does this seem like a reasonable interpretation?