[nonamechicken]

When I mentioned AirBus, I was thinking of this - that the Max crash is clearly due to corporate greed. I am not aware of any such scenario with AirBus. Not only that, according to the Netflix documentary, Boeing was trying to blame the pilots of the Indonesian and Ethiopian airlines initially. Then in turns out that the Indonesian pilot was an Indian who was trained in US, and the Ethiopian pilots followed Boeing's guidelines on MCAS failure properly.

I am looking at these blames on outsourcing from that perspective - that Boeing is trying to blame others to hide their greed.

[WalterBright]

> the Ethiopian pilots followed Boeing's guidelines on MCAS failure properly.

The Ethiopian pilots did not follow the procedure in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive distributed to all MAX pilots that says:

"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT."

https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...

You might want to also read the report:

2018 - 035 - PK-LQP Final Report http://knkt.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_aviation/baru/2018%20-%20...

And note that the first incident of MCAS failure was overcome by the pilots and the airplane landed safely.

[nonamechicken]

Thanks for the links. I am not trying to refute what you said above. But I don’t want anyone to think that I am spreading misinformation here. So I checked the Netflix Downfall documentary again. It says at 34:30 that the pilots did what Boeing instructed them to do.

The documentary talks about the Ethiopian crash from 32:00 onwards. The below excerpt is from 34:30 onwards. Name of the person talking is in '[]' brackets.

[Pasztor] Soon after the hearings got underway, we managed to get more information about what actually happened in the cockpit of the Ethiopian aircraft. We got the information from the FAA within hours after they received it from the Ethiopian investigators. It was very late at night, and we tried to put together the most comprehensive story we could. When it came out, this was the first story that revealed that the crew, in fact, realized that MCAS had kicked off. And they did what Boeing instructed them to do.

[Tajer] When the MCAS kicks in, it runs for ten seconds and pushes the airplane very powerfully nose-down. Runs for ten, off for five. Runs for ten, off for five.

[Cox] They’ve got this cacophony of stick shaker, master cautions, airspeed disagree, altitude disagree. All of these…these warnings going off. The captain, who’s flying the airplane, is trying to figure out what’s gone wrong.

[Tajer] The first officer called out, “Stab trim cutout switches, Captain.” I think he said it twice. He did what Boeing said. He turned off the MCAS system. I remember reading that, and I said, “Man, the kid got it right. The kid got it right”.

[Cox] The problem now is that the airplane is going too fast. And because of the force on the tail itself, they cannot manually trim the airplane to be able to recover.

[WalterBright]

> the Max crash is clearly due to corporate greed

Is it? The single path weakness in the MCAS design was not a cost saving measure. I've never seen an explanation for why this mistake was made.

[atoav]

The airframe was changed significantly, creating the need for the whole MCAS solution — why? Because this was seen as a solution to avoid a recertification of the airframe, which would mean pilots had to re-train, which would mean airlines wouldn't buy, which means money would not flow.

Avoiding this recertification was the only reason MCAS was chosen instead of designing an airframe in such ways the now bigger engines actually have their center of gravity where it is expected to be.

This was ultimately a cost saving measure. Boeing could not be bothered to recertify the airframe purely for comercial reasons, not because it objectively made sense.

[salawat]

It was made because implementing a dual path system would have required simulator training. Boeing wanted to avoid that at all costs as a value pitch.