The bad decisions that led to this are well known. Southwest Air has a business model based on having only one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737. They insisted that the 737 Max behave exactly like the other 737 models, and not require that pilots be trained and rated for two different aircraft. So Boeing tried to make Southwest happy.
A deeper bad decision is that Boeing doesn't have a 737 replacement. The original 737 is from the 1970s. By now, Boeing should have had a new plane out in that size range. Airbus does. COMAC is coming out with one, if it works well. But Boeing guessed wrong on the sizes of aircraft airlines would want. They thought the future was widebody, not mailing tubes full of seats. The 767, 777, and 787 are all widebodies. So, of course, was the 747. The 757 was a great airplane for passengers and pilots that airlines didn't want because it cost more and used more fuel. So Boeing had a huge lineup of widebodies, and no good competitor for the Airbus narrow-body options.
Hence the 737 MAX, a 737 with engines too big for the airframe and a software kludge to compensate for that.
Not sure how long, but they passed that point a long time ago. From what I've read, one of the goals was to not require pilot training on the new plane, and that is already going to be required now.
I don't know that Boeing has computed likely values of such costs, and that if they did, that they would allow them to be publicly known. Moreover, Boeing would probably focus on their worst-case numbers to justify to everyone why the only viable path is to minimally modify the design.
The cause of this though is as you say, the desire to make the 737MAX be on the same type certificate as the NG rather than do a clean sheet design.
Obviously in hindsight, Boeing would have been better off with the clean sheet design. At this point though, I think either they have to get the MAX recertified or they go bankrupt. They could potentially be bailed out by the government and a clean sheet design started, but even the bailed out company would be a shell of its former self with no narrowbody aircraft to sell.
I think you'll see Boeing get the MAX recertified or die trying.
This was the gamble that management took. Hopefully, they still get their bonuses. (/s)
It activated in the two crashed flights (and the earlier flight by one of those same planes) because of bad data from an AOA sensor leading the flight control systems to think the plane was about to stall.
You don't have that data, and the FAA did not release the data. I looked for this information specifically in their report, they did not report this data whatsoever.
So, making ANY statement about the rate of activation is pure speculation, and it's merely a Boeing talking-point.
This is because if the sensor fails on the ground, MCAS will always activate a few minutes into the flight, when the flaps are retracted, because the rule that activates it is disabled when the flaps are down.
The FAA can and should have obtained data on the activations of MCAS from the world wide fleet, and also compare on other similar aircraft (other 737s) how often MCAS activation conditions would have been met.
Keep in mind that without that data we are all focused on the two times MCAS led to crashes, we are all in the dark how widespread the problem really was and once that data is out in the open the FAA's reputation (or what is left of it) will be further down the drain.
Unless we are talking about the number of times MCAS activated outside of its design criteria but didn't result in a crash. For example, as is presumed to have happened on the flight before the Lion air accident.
Yes, that was what I had in mind. You can bet that on every plane that did not have the secondary input to the MCAS system this happened. Two crashes are the very ugly tip of a much larger iceberg and the FAA has a vested interest in keeping that iceberg submerged.
You assume. If we had the data, we'd know how often the 737 MAX, which has different flight characteristics than other aircraft, was actually in those conditions.
I'm expecting evidence to confirm the assumptions of the system. I'm assuming any and all available data would be gathered and analyzed. I assume the MCAS system from top to bottom is riddled with bugs and flaws, designed by committee rather than engineers. There's no reason to trust any line of reasoning from Boeing on this matter, they've already demonstrated their incompetence and are not trustworthy.
You seem to not want the FAA to verify the claims of the system with data. I don't know why that would be undesirable. Even if they only confirm what is being stated about MCAS activation, that data would be valuable and demonstrate that the FAA has at least the competence to gather the data. Publishing the raw data along with their conclusions would allow the public to verify their competence at drawing conclusions.
(1) Existing 737 pilots would not need to be recertified for the MAX. They would just need to read a short document that updated the procedure for handling runaway trim.
This would make the plane more attractive to airlines because it meant not having to pay for expensive recertification of pilots, and
(2) The plane itself would not need to be certified as a new aircraft type. The requirements for certifying new tapes change over the years, and older planes like the 737 would not meet today's requirements. By making it fly similar enough to the existing 737s, it could be classified as a variant on the existing model and be grandfathered in on the old certification.
Certifying a new type is very expensive and takes a long time.
My question is this: how long does the MAX have to be grounded before the costs of it not being service end up more than (1) the costs of recertifying pilots, and (2) the costs of making the other design changes that would be needed to certifying as a new type under current rules and then getting it certified?