As I understand it, the source is a very careful implementation of a spec, and the FAA should have the spec.

In any case, I strongly doubt that the buck should really stop at this test pilot. Someone higher up surely has some degree of responsibility. The test pilot did not invent MCAS.

> It'd have been much easier for the Boeing engineers who designed the thing so badly to have had bosses who said "wait...what? No you can't do it like that".

Interesting. I never even imagine that happening anymore. I find the reverse so much more plausible: the bosses say to design it like that but the engineers have the backbone to say no (even at the risk of being fired and replaced).

On the one hand, I see where you're coming from. Executives are the ones with the money and power, so they should have the responsibility. They should go to prison when they order misconduct (whether that's negligence, fraud, etc.). This should incentivize them to act conservatively. (Where right now, we reward them largely based on short-term stock performance, and we never punish them, and I think our executives are overwhelmingly sociopaths who pursue short-term stock performance above all else.)

On the other hand, engineers are the ones who throughly understand the issues and have licenses with ethical standards attached. They're going to notice the problem. I believe many already aren't willing to sign off on something they don't believe is safe. With good enough whistleblower protection, they'd be likely to speak up when they see someone else signing off improperly.

FAA could have looked at how the fans were upsized and pushed forward to avoid dragging on the runway, and called for a new type certification. The FAA failed by allowing Boeing to not get a new type certification, which would have required greater scrutiny of the new airframe.

the airframe was fine. the problem was that mcas was implemented in a totally shitty way. If it had just replied on 3 sensors instead of 1, wet likely wouldn't be talking about it now.

No, the airframe was different and didn't handle the same way as the old one. In order to hide that, Boeing implemented in a terribly negligent way MCAS. Had they accepted it's a different one, and had a different type rating, all would have been fine.

The 737 airframe reached a point where it was not compatible anymore with modern engines. When the 737 was designed, engines where a lot smaller, the nwer turbofans simply don't fit under the wings of a 737 anymore, so they had to be moved forward. That changed flight characteristics, Boeing used MCAS to compensate for that. If I remember correctly, on-board systems of 737 had issues with handling a second sensor for MCAS (someone with more knowledge please skim in). So they went with that config, they went, as we see in the messages from the chief tech pilot, to forgo major re-certification and thus decided to hide MCAS true nature and impact from the FAA. Consequently, they also hid it from EASA since FAA and EASA basically trusted each others certifications.

Boeing, if you ask me, committed a cardinal sin in aerospace. They cut corners, ignored redundancy, lied to regulators and as a result directly caused airframe losses killing crew and passengers. And that after decades of efforts to increase safety. All that just to save money and maybe keep market share.

Had they just done all the proper testing and development they did after the aircraft losses upfront none of that would have happened.

> Had they just done all the proper testing and development they did after the aircraft losses upfront none of that would have happened

This is a textbook example of how the most expensive point to make a change is after the product ships.

An extreme example, perhaps, but a good one.

And also, the MAX would not exist at all, because the flagship customer (Southwest) had basically said, "If it requires pilot retraining, we won't buy it."

There's plenty of blame to go around, up to and including the society that says it's ok to not pay a living wage to the working class because "infinite downward price pressure is good for consumers" (until they die in a plane crash, that is).