I'm wondering now if MCAS should be an active system. Perhaps it should instead just warn the pilots that it thinks a stall is imminent instead, like when you get the stick shaking.
They cannot do that, because then the Max loses its shared type rating due to the larger engines. MCAS exists to give the aircraft more similar flight characteristics to its predecessors.
MCAS apparently exists for more than that. A few days ago someone posted a link and some quotes from the FAA regulations on pitch stability. They require that the control force must be positive up to and throughout a stall.
Without MCAS there would be a point on that MAX where you no longer needed positive control force to continue pitching up. Without MCAS or some other system to automatically counter that, so that the pilot needs positive control force to continue pitching up, the plane could not be certified even if they did go for a new type rating.
It's not that the force must be positive. It's the the force must be consistantly increasing up to the stall as well. Without MCAS, the problem is that the force does not continue to increase to the stall point. It does stay positive at all times.
Having to get a new type certificate would likely kill the MAX. I work in aircraft certification, and I know it would be a very long and slow process on the order of years.
Not only is it a long and expensive process, but the 737 type cert grandfathers in a whole lot of things that would not be permitted in a new type. So they would have to re-engineer a brand new plane from the wheels up.
Keeping the 737 type certification was a powerful incentive. Oversight investigation should look in to whether it should have been permitted by the regulator, and what other perverse incentives may exist in the certification process.
