PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Ethiopian airliner down in Africa
View Single Post
Old 15th Mar 2019, 15:57
  #1484 (permalink)  
Luc Lion
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Vance, Belgium
Age: 62
Posts: 270
Likes: 0
Received 5 Likes on 3 Posts
Originally Posted by clearedtocross
...
So here we have an airplane design spec that was most likely not taking into account the aerodynamic behaviour of relocating the engines. I bet the problem was only detected after some test flying of the new airplane. So time runs out, a redesign of the aircraft is now impossible and so a software patch is called for to get better stall protection. The aircraft is not FBW and thus the triple redundancy and voting concept is neither required nor followed. And as all software engineers know, patches sometimes backfire because they have not been designed with the same care as the original system. Ask Bill Gates.
What I find hard to understand is why Boeing didn't elect to upgrade the Elevator Feel System for compensating this undesired aerodynamic behaviour and instead created a new MCAS software module in the FCC.
Luc Lion is offline