You're saying the plane is "safe, just different" without MCAS? But Wikipedia says:
"The MCAS flight control law was implemented on the 737 MAX to mitigate the aircraft's tendency to pitch up [...]"
I'm a layman but it sure doesn't sound like safe or normal behavior for a passenger airplane to be fundamentally designed so that it "tends to pitch up"... is it? Are there other airliners that do such a thing?
Some people argue that that behavior, without measures to prevent it, would disqualify the plane from certification completely. Others say that those measures are only needed to keep the Max under the same type rating as previous 737 generations. I'm inclined to the former, but I'm no expert so that's certainly not definitive.
So the 737Max would not "pitch up" in most normal flying, this is under high AoA situations, like a tight overspeed banking turn I think.
> The MCAS is intended to compensate in such cases [where the aircraft pitches up], modeling the pitching behavior of previous models, and meet a certain certification requirement, in order to enhance handling characteristics and thus minimizing the need for significant pilot retraining.
With proper training/re-certification pilots would be trained in the _actual_ characteristics of the plane, thus being able to correct for this behaviour.