Originally Posted by
Proximity
To be fair, the situations were different.
In the Airbus A330 iced pilot tube situation, you did not need to change the aircraft state to recover. You just needed to hold the current pitch and power setting and eventually the airspeed would return. In the 737 MAX MCAS scenerio, you need to make a prompt and active response, and the situation would never resolve over time. Moreover, the 737 MAX MCAS scenarios all happened at low altitude, whereas the A330 incidents were in cruise.
You can leave flaps in and MCAS stops activating. In the case of Ethiopian they raised the flaps around 200’ AGL. I’ve never seen them at 0° below around 1500’ AGL. Don’t know if that’s their policy or not to raise them that low to the ground.
Still doesn’t change the fact that multiple airlines reported issues with the pitot tubes and the plane wasn’t grounded 1 day.
Not saying the MAX didn’t deserve to be grounded. Just that it seems to be more political now between the various certifying agencies. The FAA shouldn’t care what the EU wants. Just that the aircraft meets US standards and is safe to fly over Toledo. Doesn’t matter what any of us thinks anyway....the things are paperweights until at least Oct.