I've read a variety of articles on this and they often said somewhat different things. What I've been able to gather about the timeline of events is:
1. The new engines on the MAX shifted the center of gravity forward (and I assume center of lift stayed the same).
2. Boeing was worried that #1 would cause the plane to nose up during high angles of attack (so, take off and landing?), and added software, MCAS, to pitch up to counteract this.
3. There's some confusion over when this software kicks in and how to cancel it (something about the trim controls not cancelling MCAS?)
4. Regardless of #3, this software seems to have confused pilots and the current belief is that MCAS was active when pilots didn't want it active.
5. ????
6. Planes crash.
Also, I've read about some concerns about the fact that the handling behavior changed so much but the plane wasn't reclassified as a different type. I'm still unclear about how classifications plays into this story.
My core point of confusion is, if MCAS is the culprit why isn't the solution to remove MCAS? Is tendency to pitch during high angles of attack unusual, and something pilots cannot be expected to counteract manually? I've only played sims like DCS and X-Plane (and not very much at that) but "nose goes up when I don't want it to, so I push stick forward" doesn't seem too complicated to me. Of course, I'm no pilot so I'm probably drastically oversimplifying the situation.
1. The new engines on the MAX shifted the center of gravity forward (and I assume center of lift stayed the same).
2. Boeing was worried that #1 would cause the plane to nose up during high angles of attack (so, take off and landing?), and added software, MCAS, to pitch up to counteract this.
3. There's some confusion over when this software kicks in and how to cancel it (something about the trim controls not cancelling MCAS?)
4. Regardless of #3, this software seems to have confused pilots and the current belief is that MCAS was active when pilots didn't want it active.
5. ????
6. Planes crash.
Also, I've read about some concerns about the fact that the handling behavior changed so much but the plane wasn't reclassified as a different type. I'm still unclear about how classifications plays into this story.
My core point of confusion is, if MCAS is the culprit why isn't the solution to remove MCAS? Is tendency to pitch during high angles of attack unusual, and something pilots cannot be expected to counteract manually? I've only played sims like DCS and X-Plane (and not very much at that) but "nose goes up when I don't want it to, so I push stick forward" doesn't seem too complicated to me. Of course, I'm no pilot so I'm probably drastically oversimplifying the situation.