Boeing Pilots Detected 737 Max Flight Control Glitch 2 Years Before Deadly Crash

The pilots knew about MCAS. What the texts indicate is the behaviour of MCAS was changed during testing without the pilots being informed, and the pilots also failing to report that change despite becoming aware of it. This was certainly a contributing factor to the events that occurred later, but not at all the smoking gun that the title implies.

Forkner:

"Oh shocker alerT!

MCAS is now active down to M .2 [mach 0.2]

It's running rampant in the sim on me

at least that's what Vince thinks is happening"

The issue that resulted in the crashes was angle of attack sensors reporting broken data, which caused MCAS to nose down the plane; this is absolutely not what the pilots are talking about.

Everything else that has been discussed (whether the pilots should have been told how to disable it and tried it in the simulator, whether Boeing should have added the second vane or even a third one on all planes, etc.) fundamentally depends on having incorrect data from the sensors and the plane not being able to deal with that.

The exchange might hint that MCAS had an awful design history, but even a perfect MCAS could have had issues if supplied with incorrect sensor data; garbage in, garbage out. Now if there was somewhere an email about the lack of a voting system on vane readings, that would be another story.

It is not clear from the transcript whether it was a misattribution when they attributed the problems they were discussing to the simulator. It also seems clear that they were not getting flying time on the actual airplane, and so were not in a position to know if the airplane itself had problems.

There are definitely issues to be investigated here, and it is not going to be helped if people are taking the fifth, as Forkner himself has done. He might want to reconsider that.

> Is it not indicative, though, of the progression of changes to MCAS over time, different speed envelopes, significantly more elevator control, etc. And no process to decide when those changes should warrant additional documentation or training requirements?

Yes, that's exactly what it is. And that in itself is a big deal.

But it is not the 'omg pilots knew about MCAS causing crashes and didn't/couldn't report it' that the media coverage is spinning it as. The title very misleading.

I've had people call me a 'boeing shill' (what would such a person even have to gain??) for pointing out these sorts of issues in the coverage back when the media was saying aoa-disagree would have prevented this from happening (it wouldn't, most commercial pilots have no native idea what aoa is, only airlines with ex-military pilots would get benefit from that package). The vast majority of people just read the headlines, assume them to be true, and move on.

There was already a process to decide if MCAS should be in the manual.

That was exactly the job of these two technical pilots who both signed off saying the MCAS was “benign” and didn’t need to be included in the manual.

These guys had direct communication with the FAA who clearly had the final word on the manual. The FAA trusted the technical pilots word (and I doubt it was just these two guys alone that decided).

The question is whether these simulator test pilots were under any pressure from Boeing to downplay it but based on their lawyers statements they seem to be defending themselves and saying the conversation was simply being misinterpreted and they didn’t have concerns. The other question is whether the FAA was too quick to trust the information coming to them.

This has been happening from the start of the 737 MAX situation.

It has been incredibly eye-opening to see how the media will amplify and outright misrepresent the facts of a situation to create outrage/clicks/uptake/whatever. I know a little bit about aviation and chat to commercial pilots so watching the media coverage and comparing it to what the people in the industry are saying has been a bit bewildering and eye opening. I can only assume the media is equally manipulative in all other subject matters where I don't know enough to discern.