> It’s not clear the AOA disagree light would have saved the two flights
Unless you change it to "It’s certain the AOA disagree light would not have saved the two flights", you are basically arguing for presence of AOA disagree light.
The FAA provides time to fix issues if its deemed to not be a critical issue - because if every problem results in grounding planes then people just won't report issues. The added stress of millions in losses could also result in subpar fixes that cause more problems.
In this case I agree with the FAA's initial decision for this indicator. Its extremely unlikely having it working would have prevented the two crashes. The mere fact that it might have helped doesn't make the original decision incorrect.
Yes but not in an absolute way. I think we can only assume that MCAS uses this as one of it's many inputs in order to determine it's flight control logic.
The critical jump pilots had to make was that this was a trim runaway event. AOA indicators were not connected to the trim system before.