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Re:My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine by mannykannot on Monday October 14, 2019 @08:55AM (#21247700)
All airliners have a cylindrical body projecting forwards from the wing, which produces a pitch-up moment at high angles of attack: it is called the fuselage [1]. Normally, the effects of all such destabilizing aspects of the design are compensated for by the correct positioning and sizing of the wing and horizontal stabilizer.

Most airliners now flying do have additional augmentation of their handling for a variety of reasons. Earlier versions of the 737 already had the elevator feel and centering unit and mach trim, but they are much less aggressive than MCAS, and, most importantly, their presence and full scope of effect was not obscured in order to avoid the cost of training pilots for their failure modes. Furthermore, in other cases where handling and stability augmentation is powerful, adequate redundancy is provided (even the 737 feel and centering unit has more redundancy than MCAS.) The presence of handling augmentation devices on other airliners does not justify the way Boeing introduced MCAS.

[1] https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/30/bjorns-corner-pitch-stabil...

Re:My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine by Excel_Wizard on Monday October 14, 2019 @10:39AM (#21248758)
I really appreciate the increasing levels of technical accuracy the further this thread grows. Hacker News draws in subject matter experts like moths to a flame.

Reminds me of the old futurama quote- technically correct is the best kind of correct.