Originally Posted by ijgordon

I think a LOT of people would vehemently disagree with you, even those that think Boeing royally screwed this up.

The issue from my understanding is not any inherent instability with the plane, it's just that, in certain corners of the flight envelope (meaning in very specific situations unlikely to be often encountered), the plane will handle somewhat differently than a 737-NG. That's totally and 100% fine, if pilots are trained on how to handle the plane in those conditions, with checklists, and simulator time, and whatnot. But that would likely require a new type certificate, which is exactly what Boeing (well really, its customers, including AA) wanted to avoid, for cost/speed reasons, since pilots would need to be certified on the new plane. So, among other things, they came up with MCAS to make the plane mimic how a 737NG would handle in those scenarios, that was supposed to be invisible to the pilots. If this were a fly-by-wire aircraft, like Airbuses and some of Boeing's more modern widebodies, this all would have been built into the flight control system.

MCAS was quite clearly very poorly implemented, but it's not an issue with the aircraft. For example, the change in placement of the engines has less an impact on the aircraft's center of gravity than cargo (or pax I supposed) could depending on where it's loaded.