Originally Posted by Lonestarcaptain

So Ethiopian and Lion Air were very different events. Lion Air NOBODY knew MCAS even existed. Ethiopian there was an Emergency AD, which the crew complied with. Only AFTER they had done everything the AD and checklist provided them did they turn the Cutout switches back on. I wasn’t in the seat and don’t know what their thought process was that led to that but I do know and what the CVR and flight data show is by that point they were out of guidance and the aircraft was still not responding to full nose up elevator due to the extreme mistrim. Maybe pulling power earlier would have helped but buy this point with it aircraft in an accelerated dive thrust is just wishful thinking, gravity is in control. So faced with trying something or hitting the ground, I’m not going to criticize them from doing whatever they throught was needed after the Checklist failed them.

The Lion Air crash, yes they encountered a runaway trim caused by a faulty AoA sensor. Of note they were at cruise power, cruise altitude and cruise trim setting. The time available to the crew to assess, balance, and do was much longer (as demonstrated by the fact that it took long enough for the jumpseater to intervene). I believe the exact write up was Trim malfunction at cruise and IAS disagree. The Maintenance logbook is available to the public through the Lion Air Crash report. Maintenance action was followed per the Boeing Maintenance manual, which made no mention of MCAS or the possibility of an AoA fault. The speed trim system would have been ground checked and the aircraft signed off. I doubt any other maintenance department would do anything different given the information available to them at the time.

No one knowingly flew an aircraft that was un airworthy. It was written up and fixed according to procedures. Would you decline an aircraft that had Mx items cleared?

A runaway stab in a 737 goes from a complete non event to “holly **** what is happening” real quick. If you stop the runaway while you still have positive elevator authority it seems like no big deal. A few seconds later or if you allow the pitch to go below the horizon it’s a completely different animal.

NASA, Boeing, EASA and every major airline that operated the MAX sent pilots to Miami after ET302. Very few could handle MCAS as it was designed. These were NTPS grads, senior test pilots, evaluators etc. If you think it was just a pilot skills issue or political I suggest you search out one of the pilots your airline sent maybe they can explain the felling of helplessness. At cleanup altitude they had about 5 second to asses the runway oversets stick shaker and master caution. If they didn’t get the cutout switch’s in the first 5 seconds they were pitch limited on the elevator authority.

It truly scares me that there are people flying this machine that don’t understand what was wrong with it and what was done to fix it.