Interactive visualisation of 737 Max MCAS system

But on an iPad! Boeing is still pretending that the training on the new simulator is not needed. In fact there are almost no new simulators at all — the MAX’s selling point was that it’s the same as the old 737.

And that was a very deadly lie.

Still, even after the software patch, with MCAS turned on, the plane pretends to behave as the old one. Once MCAS is switched off, a pilot is left with a new plane. For which he is not trained! And exactly at the moment the plane is already in danger! Because Boeing’s marketing.

The obviousness of the plane not being the same is an exact reason why Boeing tried to hide the existence of MCAS completely.

Now they still think everything is allowed to them.

The purpose of MCAS is to moderate the pitch up due to the aerodynamic lift the new nacelles produce in high angles of attack. But it did so with such aggression that it made it possible, perhaps even likely, that it would result in sufficient mistrim and high airspeed as to make it difficult to correct in a low altitude scenario until it was too late. It was a one size fits all correction, and it was abrupt, regardless of airspeed, which is rather significantly a problem at high airspeeds that would cause a problem even if high angle of attack were true.

The graphic also ignores that MCAS accepts absurd angle of attack values as actionable. In the Ethiopian Airlines case, 75 degrees is a nonsense value, there's no point in correcting for it.

In effect, they made it both too simple, and deadly.