The FAA needs to stop hemming and hawing, being unclear about what they need, put in some overtime and get things done.
Figure out how their processes become vulnerable to corruption and attempt to change them.
The problem is of course the FAA doesn't want to hurt Boeing or the industry over this. But that strongly conflicts with their job.
The hope at this point seems to be to drag it out until people forget.
That's going a bit too far. Banning MCAS and requiring pilots to undergo MAX-specific training and certification seems more reasonable (and less wasteful) response to the issues.
I would support criminal charges against the chief decision-makers that led Boeing into this mess, going all the way up to the top. Examples need to be made to reset the priorities of corporate decision-makers.
Airlines will have serious reason to consider other manufacturers if they can’t just throw pilots behind the stick with minimal training.
Hopefully the regulators will seriously investigate if it is safe to assume that the retraining is not needed even with modified MCAS.
Just claiming that pilots will easier deactivate MCAS, or that, after the "fix", MCAS will deactivate itself if there is some problem should not be enough: without MCAS running the plane just doesn't behave as the one for which the pilots were trained.
That's what Boeing wanted, but that doesn't mean they should get it.
Anyway, I think "doomed" is overstating it. I would assume whatever training an existing 737 pilot would need to fly and MCAS-less MAX would be far less that what they would need to fly an Airbus.
Everyone else has stated that the reason for MCAS is so that MAX could be certified as a previous generation of 737 and therefore not require training for an established 737 pilot to fly.
If they want to remove MCAS then they need to enlarge the undercarriage to give the aircraft more ground clearance, so that the engines can be placed further back. Such a major change to the aircraft's design would mean the 737 MAX could not share a type rating with the other 737s or at least would require significant differences training (not an iPad lesson)
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
Yes, you are correct in that part of the reason for it was to mimic the control forces of older 737's for avoiding the burden of simulator training.
However, you have to look at why it was a manufacturer would take the risk to make such a boneheaded implementation in the first place. Nothing goes into a mass-produced highly complex system without being very carefully thought through. It wasn't some "accident". It was a calculated act of value engineering. On the one hand, someone had wind tunnel results that said there would be a divergence from the old 737 force curves. On the other, you had a pile of solutions capable of fixing the problem, each with varying degrees of cooperation with regulators, time taken, and a price tag attached.
The FAA (if provided with the benefit of a doubt that they aren't covering their asses which I'm not necessarily willing to give given reports from the IG) has signalled that if they'd known what MCAS was, they'd have demanded more intense scrutiny and testing.
There was whistleblower testimony alleged in the 60 Minutes expose on the MAX, that Boeing intentionally engineered the system in such a way as to minimize outside scrutiny of the system (I.e. regulator attention) in order to get development done, and planes out the door.
What this signals is that there was pressure from management to get things done, which meant minimizing external exposure and exploiting every trick they knew to get a rubber stamp out of the regulator.
Now in terms of not being certifiable, I offer a brief bit of Boeing history. The D.P. Davies interview w.r.t the the certification of the 727 by the U.K. CAA. As a well-known test pilot, Davies goes into great detail to describe how the U.K. regulator was very particular about control forces on approach to stall for that aircraft; to the point that the 727 only got conditional airworthyness certification for civil transport via the addition of a stick pusher; a device intended to make it very clear the pilot was approaching a stall.
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/audio-the-d-p-davies-interv...
Some people at Boeing knew, or were in a position to know the behavior they were dealing with was of a type previously uncertifiable. Someone knew that if they could sneak the plane past the FAA, that reciprocity would shield the plane from further scrutiny unless something catastrophic happened.
I don't know who it was, nor do I know whether the paper trail will be enough to bear it out. American management nowadays tends to go out of their way to minimize paper trail and maximize "fill-in-the-blank" style communication to facilitate plausible deniability.
I would suggest at this point, the ...creative documentation... that Boeing's been doing to keep the "737" a "737" has reached the end of the line.
We can fix these things.
We should not be approaching engineering problems with emotional reactions to crashes. The airline industry is so incredibly safe because each crash is analyzed, the problems identified and solved. If two crashes mean we should scrap it, does that mean we just stop flying because every major aircraft type has had serious incidents.
No, we fix the problems and keep flying. You don't get better at something by giving up the first time you make a mistake.
From what I've read the engines that were the whole point of the plan just didn't work physics wise because they were too big for the 737 frame that their required placement moved the center of gravity to a bad spot.
Instead of scraping the idea as they should've they did a software fix. You can't solve a bad aircraft design with software. You can patch it but it leaves you open to all sorts of issues.
Issues we've now clearly seen have killed people. Issues that people have claimed were known about (how would the engineers not know?) but were sweep under the rug in the name of profits.
When people knowingly endanger other's lives in the name of profits they should face a trial and be judged.
1. poor detail software design of the MCAS (single point of failure)
2. poor pilot training (2 crews couldn't remember how to operate the trim system)
Both are easily fixed.