Re:Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions into 737 Max, Blind to a ...
by leoc on Saturday June 01, 2019 @08:53PM
(#20072772)
>> [...] In most of the flight envelope the aircraft is stable.
>> At high alpha the aircraft has pitch problems.
> I believe the airplane is aerodynamically stable even at high alpha. [...] This is not a flying wing or intentionally unstable airplane (as the F-16).
In some ways that's likely worse news than an airplane that's inherently unstable in general, no? A corner case, and one that evidently isn't actually all that uncommon. If you're building something like an F-16 you know that you absolutely have to make the fly-by-wire correct and robust, and the ground crews similarly know that if anything affects its performance the plane isn't fit to fly.
>> At high alpha the aircraft has pitch problems.
> I believe the airplane is aerodynamically stable even at high alpha. [...] This is not a flying wing or intentionally unstable airplane (as the F-16).
In some ways that's likely worse news than an airplane that's inherently unstable in general, no? A corner case, and one that evidently isn't actually all that uncommon. If you're building something like an F-16 you know that you absolutely have to make the fly-by-wire correct and robust, and the ground crews similarly know that if anything affects its performance the plane isn't fit to fly.