[breatheoften]

I’ve been trying to understand how the vertical pitch measurement is supposed to be suitable for use as part of the MCAS decision process at all. Seems to me wind shear and other atmospheric effects are going to make an airspeed based measurement of angle of attack _always_ subject to condition dependent measurement error. The fact that the pilot is assumed to have a more navigationally useful estimate for angle of attack (in that they are able to know when the angle of attack measurement from the sensor is wrong) makes me think there is something fundamentally flawed about the way this quantity is being estimated by the existing sensor — the modality of measurement might not be an appropriate way to control this flight process if atmospheric effects can bias the measurement in a way that can be calibrated by pilot knowledge but with these corrections not reintroduced into the flight process ...

[salawat]

Planes can have multiple AoA sensors, and often do. An indicator which makes the pilot aware of divergent AoA sensor readings is a paid upgrade.

Though I also have to agree, as soon as this sensor's input became crucial to determining operational boundary conditions, the system needed some rather stringent hardening. It's a bit like leaving your auto-scaling load balancing infrastructure exposed and getting upset at your AWS bill the first time someone DDoS's it to inflate your hosting footprint.