John Burke, while blaming 4 dead men is easy, you can’t overlook or give a pass to Boeing’s critical errors:
1. After Boeing itself said that failure of MCAS itself is a “hazard” level threat, the system by definition should never have been hooked up to only one sensor for information. By definition, a hazard level failure mode requires more than one source for information. It’s a safety requirement. Boeing failed.
2. Putting in paperwork for the feds that MCAS only travels 0.6 deg per activation, whereas reality was it travels 2.5 degrees in one go. And max travel is a little over 5 degrees on the stab trim. Boeing made the system act 4x more than what they told the feds. Boeing failure.
3. No limit on MCAS activation per occurrence of high alpha sensed. Every time the system reset with trim switches, it can run again. Unlimited cycles. 2.5 each time, 2 cycles if left unchecked will get a fully trimmed nose down. This is also a Boeing failure, when their intention was just to ease the nose down in case of high alpha due to engines being positioned higher and further forward.
4. No MCAS info passed to airline customers, nor crew. That’s a horrible failure on Boeing’s end.
For decades the saying was if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going. That has largely to do with the fact that Airbus has law protections, and “the computer” can get the final say and/or override the pilot. Boeing, the pilot has the final authority.
MCAS changed all that. And Boeing rolled it out horribly.
You say they should have recognized it as stab trim runaway and done the memory item for cutoff switches. Easy to say now, keep in mind they were faced first with a bad AOA sensor, a stick shaker that was on throughout, and false instrument readings. And MCAS runs the trim temporarily and stops, so it doesn’t look like a full on runaway.
Imagine if Boeing had told airlines and pilots about MCAS. If they had the proper system knowledge, maybe one pilot would have said, maybe it’s that MCAS thing, let’s get the flaps out of 0, it’ll stop. Flaps 1. And everyone lives.
The foreign regularity authorities and airlines were absolutely right to ground the MAX. The FAA let Boeing self-certify too much itself, and Boeing broke basic safety rules (see item 1-4 above).
Boeing will settle the lawsuits, just watch.