Originally Posted by
CZAMFlyer
I can understand how, to those not immersed in an industry on a daily basis, that the decisions rendered can seem confusing. When we complain about decisions made by professionals, we usually do so without much understanding of the facts, regulations in effect or other mitigating circumstances. These could be aviation-related or judgements made by a court, parole board, government body or any other area in which we have little understanding.
So basically 'trust us, we wear suits to work every day'.
The airplanes already delivered at the time of grounding last March have not lost their certificates of airworthiness*.
Airworthiness is far more than just a certificate from the manufacturer at the time of manufacturing. Airworthiness encompasses an ongoing maintenance program, ongoing adherence to airworthiness directives, professional maintenance supervision including performance monitoring of certain components, supplemental type certification for any modifications that have been made outside of the scope of the manufacturers certificate of airworthiness, proper logbooks, etc. Its pretty hard to argue that any 737Max's are legally airworthy at the moment, despite the delivered ones all possessing at least a notional "certificate of airworthiness" as delivered by the manufacturer. Hence, they require special authority to operate which invariably comes with terms. The problem being, whether those terms unduly placate the commercial interests of the operator(s), or legitimately serve to protect the public from the potentially involuntary harm of an unairworthy aircraft.
They have simply been grounded and banned from operating revenue flights for the time being. The NOTAM banning the operation of the Boeing 737 Max currently in effect in Canada specifically allows ferry flights. As for the training/testing flights, these are conducted with the specific approval of Transport Canada for each individual flight. The regulatory agency doesn't rubber-stamp the approvals for these repositioning or testing flights; they are issued under strict conditions with defendable rationale. The safety of the general public is considered, and obviously in these cases, was determined not to be in peril.
Then what modifications, lock-outs, restrictions have been imposed on the aircraft to relieve it from the previously deemed to be unacceptably elevated risk of harm experienced prior? Aside from no passengers?
To your point about MCAS being "locked out", I'm not a Boeing expert, but I don't think this is a feature that can be disabled at will.
Its my belief that MCAS cannot activate in a gear down/flaps deployed situation (not sure if it is a combination of the conditions, or just one of the conditions), so a hypothetical restriction could be banning flights for which the landing gear and flaps are raised. Thus creating the condition where MCAS cannot deploy, even if fed with erroneous information.