Re:Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with med...
by gsnedders on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @10:31PM
(#25285022)
The 737 MAX is aerodynamically stable. MCAS is primarily concerned with making the forces one needs to apply on the stick at high angles of attack comparable to earlier generations of 737.
An interesting question is going to be as to what happens elsewhere in the world; I'd be intrigued to see if Boeing ends up certifying the 737 MAX with MCAS as an optional feature with additional difference training required, as some things mentioned suggest that it's not implausible that this will happen.
Re:Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with med...
by myrandomcomment on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @09:25PM
(#25284528)
Have an up vote for logic!
Airbus had a crash because their fly by wire averaged the input from both yokes vs doing what Boeing does which is to allow both to feel that the other is pushing on the yoke and the pilots where not trained to understand that.
The implementation is certainly not "elegant". It's like this random batch job that triggers when some conditions are satisfied and does its own thing without regard for anything else, sure. Not integrated with the auto-pilot, does not display anything in the panel.
We have plenty of aircraft (even though most are military) which are aerodynamically unstable, and require fly-by-wire software to even be flyable. We don't think those are kludges. That's not too far from what Boeing has to do.
It could have been either a fancier fly-by-wire software in the Airbus philosophy that wouldn't let pilots exceed parameters(retrofitting it might have been a challenge, and possibly even more dangerous). Or it could be this non-elegant solution that behaves like an old-school stick pusher. Both could have worked.
The problem is that they did this while trusting a single sensor. And not informed anyone.