Originally Posted by
LEOCh
Thanks, that makes a good deal of sense. I think if MCAS is updated with improved robustness of AoA sensing, and some sort of total stab authority limitation, it should be comparable to STS in risk. Besides the oddities of the system trimming against you to provide stable aircraft behaviour, STS is not controversial from a safety viewpoint. I guess the politics of sensor/algorithm/software fixes to aerodynamics will be very toxic for the near future though.
Thanks for the very interesting input! I'm not a pilot but a programmer. From a Control System perspective it seems very difficult to define a single 'event'. Does it last for 30 seconds or 5 minutes? If an aircraft approaches stall twice, does the behaviour of the first MCAS event inhibit the second one?
The more constraints are put into a system, the more possibilities there are for ending up in a logical conundrum. What may be obvious to a human is not so clear to a computer. IMO fixing MCAS may mitigate the potential for disaster, while still leaving unanticipated outcomes in the system.
Just my 2c.