Well this has been a fun 16 pages! I personally don't think there is much point forming an opinion about this until there is an actual conclusion, this goes both ways by the way.
As a LAYPERSON what I see as a problem is the mix of comprehensive and non comprehensive aircraft design training and operation. What I mean is with the complexity of the industry and the systems involved it isn't really clear who is responsible for the safe operation of the plane or maybe more accurately where the boundaries are between the responsible parties. It seems like part of the certification of these kinds of aircraft includes the certification (this might not be the right word, apologies,) of the crews that operate and maintain them. The dodgy bit about the MCAS for me isn't that it malfunctioned it is that Boeing did not "explain" that it existed nor how it worked. Also it seems that the design of the system was a bit less than perfect with the possibility that some initial design constraints about speed change and maximum angle trim were pushed back on in order for the system to provide adequate stall protection. Again the full explanation is not in yet so who knows. There is a strong argument that despite the failure of the MCAS it should have been within the pilot skill envelope to recognize react and disable without much drama. That may well be the case however, should doesn't really help and to my eye the question becomes: if you are selling a jet to customers across the world and you have added a completely new software driven path to the trim actuation system in order to be able to certify that jet with new engines which change the aerodynamics of that jet such that it wouldn't certify without it shouldn't part of the certification of that jet be manuals and training on that system and how do deal with its particular failure?
Another question is if the pilots of some of these airlines are so lousy, should you be selling them airplanes? Don't you have any say as to what the training requirements are for the airplane you produce? It is obvious that there is a nascent conflict of interest between sales/price and cost of safety. At some point you put a price on life and decide just how much you are going to spend to protect it, this is just basic. What becomes an issue is when there is the appearance, valid or not, that some suit has trimmed a little close to the edge. I am not saying this is the case but it is a fact that the normalization of deviance happens in these kind of complicated engineering systems and one of the unfortunate reasons is that there is often the perception that there is a large margin of error built in for safety reasons so a little bit of it can be used up, do that enough times and then there is no more margin.
As for politics, I can only say "of course it is political." Airplanes like defense are hugely political. It is easy to make up a bunch of BS and point the finger and the news is by and large going to mangle the details but all of that aside I don't think that this is a non event that is being blown way out of proportion, (I think it is a little out of proportion,) but the fact that two plane loads of people died demands an answer to the question: how do you keep that from happening again. Given the complexity of the systems, (the planes, the training, the laws, the blah blah blah,) I don't think you can just go "lousy pilots" and wash your hands.
If you read this far you win!
