That cannot be. It was widely reported that the complete South Western Airlines MAX fleet insisted on the second sensor being installed. And so they did. They bypassed the FAA rubber-stamp approval.
The FAA not knowing about this is not plausible. Everybody knew that. It was a major criticism on the FAA ability to control air safety.
Are you speaking of the AOA disagree "light" here?
I use scare quotes above because it's not even a light, but instead an icon on the main console display.
Two AOA sensors exist on all of the original 737MAX aircraft. The original MCAS would use one sensor at a time for its calculation in an alternating fashion, which would swap between flights.
The AOA disagree was only an indication for the pilots and wasn't an actual upgrade to the function of the original MCAS for those that paid for the icon.
Juan Brown of the youtube channel blancolirio has given really excellent coverage if you look back through his explainations.
Ah thanks, that was it, yes. They had two sensors, and just switched between them. The South-western upgrade was only an indicator for sensor failure, not a real input into the MCAS controller logic, as it should be.
If he really is the chief engineer and that has any meaning, for ex if he signed off the design, should he not maybe be jailed for his failure to know what he signed?
I don't find it surprising. I don't always know how exactly every small feature is implemented in the software projects I've been the lead in, and an entire plane is probably much more complex than any of those.
Aircraft software is different. Pilots are supposed to know this kind of thing when they get a type rating. The chief engineer absolutely should do. Knowing which sensors the autopilots are using is not even arcane, it's basic knowledge.
The article shows that safety engineers at the FAA would have had the requisite knowledge to see the problems with the MCAS system, but as OP said above, there was no "issue paper" from Boeing to regulators about the system.