> In a tense meeting with the American Airlines pilots union after the crash, a Boeing vice president, Mike Sinnett, said he was confident that pilots were equipped to deal with problems, according to an audio recording review by The New York Times. A top Boeing test pilot, Craig Bomben, agreed, saying, “I don’t know that understanding the system would have changed the outcome of this.”
Should that be Craig Bomben "disagreed"?
Boeing's procedure only works if you catch it quickly. If you let MCAS trim the aircraft too much it is difficult to recover, particularly at low altitude.
1. Both stab trim cut switches now cut electronic horizontal stabilizer trim control and automated control together.
2. And manual control does not function at high airspeeds.
3. So... A planeload of people is screwed...
That seems like a really risky set of design choices.
Remember, Boeing at the time had not disclosed MCAS to the pilot community. Both speakers are from Boeing, and the first one says that the accident pilots, even though they did not manage to fix the problem, were well equipped (by standard Boeing procedures for stab trim runaway) to do so. The second speaker agrees, saying that knowing about MCAS would not have made any difference.
The article directly quotes him as saying, "I don’t know that understanding the system would have changed the outcome of this." The "this" refers to a deadly crash in which everyone died. He is saying that if a pilot knew about MCAS, the plane still would have crashed. He said this in response to a claim that pilots didn't need to know about MCAS. That is disagreeing by using sarcasm. The Times interprets it though as agreeing and doesn't see the sarcasm.
To summarize:
Claim: Pilots don't need to know about MCAS.
Response: Correct, even if they knew, given the system's flawed design, everyone still would have died in this case, so, technically, knowing about it wouldn't have helped.
Now maybe that's not what he meant. But it looks like he did. I don't believe that the context of the conversation supports an interpretation that he was agreeing that sufficiently skilled pilots would not have crashed whether or not they knew about MCAS given that he refers to "the outcome of this" not changing, the "outcome of this" being the crash.
The classic Stabilizer Trim Runaway is a continuous uncommanded actuation of the trim mechanism on a particular direction.
Catastrophic MCAS failure manifests as a series of discrete, amplifying activations, which are far easier for a pilot to dismiss as the normal operation of the Auto-Trim, and speed trim systems.
The is is a manifestly different pattern to look for, and was only caught by one air crew (on the penultimate flight of the Lion Air aircraft) by the assistance of a third, uninvolved pilot along for the ride.
I understand how one could see Boeing's internal test pilot as being reasonable, but keep in mind who signs his paycheck, and future prospects for him if the company gets found liable.
Perspective, and understanding of what different parties have at stake is essential in evaluating what is actually being communicated, and why. Words have long tails in the aftermath of a crisis like this.