Airplanes and Accounting Games: The Coming Boeing Collapse?

Re:Airplanes and Accounting Games: The Coming Boeing Collapse? by henryfjordan on Thursday December 19, 2019 @05:52PM (#21840098)

I'm not saying unstable planes cannot be built, just that I don't trust a company that's already had 2 planes go down to get it right.

A quick google search seemed to imply most unstable airframes were military or experimental, not commercial. Unstable airframes are not appropriate for commercial airliners unless you can point to a good reason. "We don't want to train pilots" is a bad reason. The FAA should have pushed back very hard on this point.

Personally I think the flaws in the 737-MAX design process were so deep that it would be safest to just scrap the plane. It's not that the issues cannot be fixed, but rather that we'd be better off starting over from scratch knowing that good design principles will be followed the whole time.

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Re:Airplanes and Accounting Games: The Coming Boeing Collapse? by mlyle on Thursday December 19, 2019 @06:02PM (#21840174)

It is not "unstable" in that sense.

At high thrust, slow speed, high aoa it is a little too close to neutrally statically stable.

C f. to airliners that can break up from dynamic yaw instability if the yaw dampers fail in some flight regimes.

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Re:Airplanes and Accounting Games: The Coming Boeing Collapse? by henryfjordan on Thursday December 19, 2019 @06:10PM (#21840242)

Thanks for explaining! I suppose I've been using "unstable" a bit too liberally in this thread.

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