After reading all of this – plus remembering the numerous same subject matter blogs – I just can’t believe that a pilot would walk away from this airplane because they didn’t know enough about the onboard systems to deal with a runaway trim problem. Did a poorly designed single point failure mode contribute … sure. But there WAS a way around the problem. This was a lack of systems knowledge on the part of the crews and a training problem on the part of the airlines and a problem with the low bidder subcontractor MCAS design. The magic “three” in aviation. I can’t see how anyone couldn’t now fly this thing and still have a problem with the knowledge now available and the impending improvement changes coming.
One of my dearest aviation friends – a retired high time airline pilot, now 86 (who has stories that’d make the hair on your neck stand at attention) – just sent me a pic of him standing next to a Fairchild F-227 which he said he has 3,521 hours in from 1966-72. That airplane had NO AUTOPILOT, the flaps ran on electric but the gear, brakes and steering all ran on bleed air. He told me that there was a switch that’d use the MLG as speed brakes but keep the NLG up – it had no MLG speed limit. Only when the gear handle was down did the NLG come down. They could manually move fuel around and regularly did. He told me that his airline had unique FAA approval to fly something called a “Crowbar VFR approach” into JFK over the top of LGA from 7.5K’ by dumping it in while hand flying. I can imagine the wimps you’re referring to trying to fly such a machine. But I’d bet they’re pretty good at running all the computers; switches, not so much?
Is THIS where commercial aviation has gone? No wonder automated flight is just over the horizon. NOW you’re scaring me.