acm2033

My dad (b 1930s) said his rural doctor would just pop out the tonsils with a loop like you use to castrate cattle back in the day.

I didn't ever really find out if he was serious or not....

Yeah, I remember taking a tour of ABQ TRACON, back in the 90s. It was really cool--but even then the equipment looked so old. Anyone could have messed up stuff in there if so inclined. I'm sure that's changed now...

IANAP nor am I any expert at all.

From what I've read, the MCAS software doesn't do much, really. The problem with the Ethiopian flight was that, despite correctly diagnosing the problem and turning off power to the trim, they did that when the trim was severely "down" (they had no choice). One flaw was that the trim, without power, couldn't be leveled. It took the crew everything they had to keep it in level flight. To safely descend and turn, they had to turn the power to the trim back on, but since MCAS is on when the trim is on, it thought the plane had a high AOA and flew it into the ground.

That crew did everything by the book, they were victims of the inability to change the trim without MCAS interference.

I do not know, but I would hope that the engineers working on a solution will find a way to power the trim but leave MCAS out of the loop.

So, what pilots really need is a "no, really, kill the automation" switch that shuts off everything down to just the hydraulics (including MCAS) and lets you reset the trim to neutral. Then you set the power to 75% or whatever the manual says is correct for level flight, stick the horizon on the top of the dash and you're back to airmanship 101.

IANAP, and I got the above from cruising aviation boards.

Any state ending in -istan, I imagine.

Yeah, and Lockerbie was, when, 1988? 86?