[nexuist]

Yeah, keeping testers in the dark works when you're trying to observe if they can navigate a menubar, not when they're piloting a passenger airliner. Test pilots are often engineers themselves, and (at least in the early days) many test pilots worked on designing the very systems they were going airborne to test.

Test pilots should have been informed about MCAS. It's another variable to take into consideration and another system that needs to be tested. How can anyone be sure it does what it's supposed to do when nobody tried activating it? Imagine how many lives could have been saved had someone had the bright idea to put it on the checklist.