The actual transcript is illuminating. This feels like corporate throwing the test pilots under the bus.<p><a href="https://graphics.reuters.com/BOEING-737/0100B2J51TY/Boeing%20Document.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://graphics.reuters.com/BOEING-737/0100B2J51TY/Boeing%2...</a>
Why are journalists still calling this an 'anti-stall' system. It's not, and it's so deceptive about what it actually does. The crashes had nothing to do with stalls, the system does nothing to prevent stalls, and the safety regulations that brought it about are only indirectly related to stalls.<p>The system affects <i>how the flight stick feels</i> and that's really it. The more you pull up (higher AoA), the more force is needed on the stick. That's supposed to be linear within some margin of error. The big fat new engines took it out of the linear envelope, making it a bit lighter than it 'should' be at high AoA as the engines caught the wind. They either fixed this, or else needed a new type rating (pilots can't hold more than one, so it's a <i>huge</i> issue for existing operators of 737s).<p>The solution was MCAS which, as originally designed, wasn't powerful enough to cause problems. But test pilots said that the stick was still a bit light, so they reworked it and made it way too strong, while still being invisible to pilots and lacking the reliability of a critical system. Then several hundred people died.
What’s the implication here? That it’s these pilot’s fault? Surely their job is just to report what they experience during a flight sim and it’s someone else who would have decided to hide that.
>The pilot, Mark Forkner, complained that the system, known as MCAS, was causing him trouble. “It’s running rampant in the sim,” he said in a message to a colleague, referring to the simulator. "Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious,” he went on to say, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The New York Times.<p>People need to go to prison over this.