That's incorrect. All planes have a relationship with thrust and pitch based on multiple factors (size, weight, speed, wing configuration, altitude, etc). The aircraft was perfectly sound.
The problem was software designed to alter the flight profile automatically to minimize the differences and new training required (and was allowed to override manual inputs). Any pilot with full training of this specific plane without MCAS would have no problem flying it.
The planes didn't crash because they pitched up but because bad software mistakenly, and forcibly, pitched them down.
What the poster was more likely referring to was the uncertifiable behavior that would occur without MCAS during a wind-up turm or during descent whereby stick control forces would slacken on the way to stall instead of requiring steadily increasing pressure on the control column to bring the plane to a stall due to extra lift from the forward nacelles. While technically a pilot could deal with it, aircraft that demonstrate said behavior cannot be certified as civil transport aircraft without appropriate mitigations.
It seems to me that the folks here arguing that the 737 Max is safe have a definition of "safe" that would satisfy a military test pilot. I'm sure that even without MCAS a top-notch pilot could fly the Max without incident, but when it comes to passenger aircraft safety, the bar is considerably higher.
Both incorrect. The stability system to correct pitch to avoid training is only one side of the story. The other side is there wasn't a linear relationship between pitch, aoa and stick forces, and that would not have passed the faa certification.
" I want to adjust the thrust angle from where it was (0° with respect to the chord line) to reduce the downward pitching moment when thrust is added (or more importantly the upward pitch moment when thrust is reduced)"
It does not just pitch up randomly. It does pitch more than other 737s due to engine size and placement, but that's just the specific behavior of this plane.
Stalls are not a serious problem, they're basically the first thing pilots learn to solve. And there are plenty of aircraft that are more challenging to fly. That's what training is for.
The real issue is that pilots should have full understanding of the behaviors of the airframe instead of relying on software to change it. Especially when they don't have full understanding of the software either, and the system can both override manual inputs while being susceptible to faulty sensors.
Seems like the vast majority of cases there are personal aircraft not piloted by ATPs. General aviation is what it is. Certainly there are airline pilots that don't recover from stalls successfully (Colgan Air Flight 3407's crew), but there are confounding factors like sleep deprivation. Personally, I worry a lot more about sleep deprivation than particular subsystems of jetliners. You can easily kill two airliners worth of people in a few seconds when you read back "hold short of runway 31R" and then just barel onto it because you're not alert.
The source says "the overwhelming majority of unintended stalls occur on personal flights in day visual meterological conditions (VMC) under light winds". And the commercial flights are mostly part 137 (aerial application like agriculture and fire fighting).
So to add context, stalls under commercial part 135 flights are extremely rare and even less fatal. There's almost always some other compounding issue that led to the stall instead of just basic flight maneuvering.