“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”
Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wonder what other systems are at risk.<p>In summary, the software fix does the following:<p>1. Use inputs from both AOA sensors, if they disagree by 5.5 degrees, disable MCAS. Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth between the two after every flight.<p>2. Triple redundant filters, A) Average value reasonability filter B) Catastrophic failure low-to-high transition filter C) Left vs. Right AOA deviation filter<p>3. Limiting MCAS stab trim so that the elevator always can provide 1.2g of nose-up pitch authority for recovery. Furthermore, electric trim with the yoke switch will override MCAS.<p>Turns out that armchair analysis was sort of on point and goes along with the incompetency at Boeing affirmed in this reddit post - sometimes, I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts.<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/zGM0V7zEKEQ?t=370" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/zGM0V7zEKEQ?t=370</a>