Originally Posted by
Texasbound
No, but he does have 25,000 in a 737 with the same Speed Trim System that MCAS is a sub system of. One of 4 sub systems actually. One of which called "high AOA". Biggest mistake Boeing made was calling it MCAS and not "High AOA B"
Speed Trim Malfunctions are dealt with using the Runway Stab checklist. It doesn't matter if the runaway is being caused by MCAS, TCAS, GCAS or Muhammad I'm hard Bruce Lee. It was still a runaway trim and the pitch trim switches on either yoke would override it. Running the Runaway Stab Trim checklist would have stopped it. The Lion Air Captain flew for several minutes just fine by trimming out all the MCAS inputs. Plane did not crash until he transferred control to the FO who never touched the switches. He transferred aircraft control because the FO could not find the unreliable airspeed checklist.
If the FO had not touched the switches, the crash might not have happened. He touched the switches (AFAIR) 3 times, for about half a second each, and MCAS replied 3 times with about 4.5 degrees AND, had he not trimmed, MCAS would not have acted up again. Obviously the crew did not handle this anywhere near competently, but I do think some people at B willfully tried to hide the extent of what MCAS was capable of from the FAA, and didn't realize themselves how bad of a design it was. The reason they made it dependant on 1 AOA as opposed to comparing both was to prevent having a miscompare annunciator, and another checklist, and that would have added training (on the KC-46 MCAS uses both AOAs, but for the 737 they took that out). Just one questionable practice to save money.