Too bad. I know I am now permanently reluctant to fly 737s
MCAS is not a feature to correct an unstable aircraft, it's to correct a confused pilot. MCAS is triggered if the following circumstances are right: 1) The airspeed is near stalling speed (takeoffs and landings) 2) The AOA (as reported by both sensors now) is greater than the aircraft can climb.
The problem was that 1) the AOA data was faulty, 2) it did not check if there was a disagreement with the backup system 3) The aircraft failed to reset each time it took corrective measures such that each the correction was compounded. 4) the corrective action was 3 times more than approved.
All of these things have been fixed but it also shows how many things have to go wrong for something to be catastrophic. But the max has been built on a solid foundation and that's much better than having to start from scratch.
I just hope the correct conclusions will be learnt from this crash:
* have a truly independent certification process
* don't fix your physical design issues with software
* don't write and maintain software running on an airplane like the software from the start-up world: significant design flaws are not tolerable for software running in an airplane, even if they can be fixed easily.
* don't hide new systems, if there is a new system, then pilot should be trained
by the way, it's not the first time a new system caught pilot by surprised because they didn't knew about it. SAS Flight 751 is another example, ice ingestion damaged the engines, the pilots reduced the thrust to reduce stress, but an automatic system (ATR, Automatic Thrust Restoration), unknown to the pilots, put the thrust back to full power, disintegrating the engines, the plane fortunately crash landed without fatalities thanks to the pilots skills and a bit of luck.
* Boeing should really think about replacing the 737, the old design is putting too much constraints, preventing a clean design.