So, MechEngr, I'm laboring to stay concise, inasmuch as I feel like we've landed in "Cool Hand Luke" (1967): ["What we have here, is a failure to communicate.'"]
First, the court filing I referenced (and thank you for linking it) was prepared and filed by Paul Cassell, lead counsel for the crash victims' families in the federal court criminal case in Texas. Mr. Cassell is a law professor at the University of Utah in addition to his representation of clients. Other counsel are listed as well. There is no mention, none whatsover, anywhere in the filing, of the junior United States Senator from Texas, Senator Ted Cruz [edit: as an author of the court filing].. True, he filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, but to bring up his name in the particular context of the court filing I referenced .... I have to say, whatever substantive point sought to be communicated has not reached my comprehension.
Second, the training video. For openers, watching it is one thing, comprehending pilot reflexes (your term) is something not allowed for SLFs absent unique experience and qualifications, which I most certainly have not claimed to have (here, or anywhere else). As you note, the simulator is for a pre-737 MAX variant - would that not call into question its relevance for assessing anything about the MAX or MCAS, including but not limited to the two accidents? Also, one wonders what to think about the disclaimer on the video, "not for training purposes" - is it somehow below standards?
(So, yes, I had watched part of it before, and more of it now, but what exactly it is supposed to prove about the issues being discussed here .... not clear.)
Third, you wrote, "Every scrap of the required information was in the report and every response requested was in the emergency AD." You also wrote, "Boeing knew as much as everyone about it after the preliminary report - no airline took the planes out off service, no CAA questioned the emergency AD or the FCOM update."
After the NYT Magazine published an article written by William Langewiesche (Sept. 2019), this SLF/attorney asserted some similar notions about the evident mishandling, by the Ethiopian pilots, of the situation presented to them, on a twitter thread run by an independent aviation journalist and blogger (who doesn't deserve to have his name or publication dragged into this thread). Of course I only could parrot, or try to summarize, what the NYT article had claimed - not interpret things from a pilot's knowledge base. And did I ever get "ratio'd"!! Attacked for having "blamed the pilots", I kind of swore off making assertions of that nature a second time.
Which of course does not constrain anyone else. But what is the point sought to be established? Let it be assumed that the unfortunate souls who perished in the Ethiopian crash lost their lives due to the causes you have asserted. What does that prove about the 737 MAX debacle overall? So, all the information needed for that flight crew to save the day was available - how does that help Boeing out of the overall problem it created for itself? And if I didn't know better, I could miscontrue the second sentence quoted above, about the absence of airline and CAA actions and objections to the emergency AD, as a claim that the entire 737 MAX debacle has been nothing but an overreaction to the successful hoodwinking by Ethiopian entities to achieve what you call a "win-win." Surely you don't mean that, in other words that all the reports, in House of Representatives, by specially appointed panels at DOT, by the Inspector General, and more, really weren't about anythinig material, weren't necessary, because Ethiopia set out for a win-win. Yet that is how your advocacy, to be blunt, appears to play among the larger audience, as near as I can tell.
And speaking of that country and its motives - and leaving to one side the interesting question, what special insight or sourcing do you have for Ethiopia, or is it just keen powers of observation and logic being applied - you're asking the world (or the fraction of it that digs into threads here) to believe that the "discount" was a sufficiently concrete and material factor for the government to play air-crash roulette? I think, probably, something more definite in the way of proof (not merely what media types invoke as "evidence") would be needed. Perhaps there is a great deal of proof available (?)
Almost last, you wrote about thousands upon thousands of three levels of crash victims' relatives. Is there even a single case in any air crash disaster in which such levels of claimants have been before the court, let alone compensated? Maybe that was just colorful advocacy - but if there are examples, it would be nice to add to one's knowledge.
And finally, the point I raised was that after Lion AIr, the statements - for example, what the CEO told the Wall Street Journal - were purposefully deceitful. I've said it before and one more time, with lack of feeling: even if the "win-win" scheme, or call it a conspiracy or plot or calculation, happened as you assert, what "if anything" does that prove about: (a) false and misleading statements by Boeing after the Lion Air crash, and (b) the overall 737 MAX debacle?
Last edited by WillowRun 6-3; 17th Apr 2023 at 22:09.