Originally Posted by
PaxBritannica
I can't see that a quick fix for MCAS is going to reassure the travelling public, ie me. If MCAS was a bodge, how many other bodges were found acceptable? If this was the only place in the design where engineers were asked to take a 'small' risk, I suspect whispers would have gotten around long before the plane flew. Therefore, it's likely that it was just one of many other design 'solutions' where the idea of tolerable risk was normalised.
No software patch will fix systemic management hubris.
It is amazing the amount of Boeing bashing on this forum. Boeing has made tens of thousands of safe & efficient airliners for more than half a century & that's why there are more Boeings than anything else. Every airplane design is a compromise that needs to be tweaked in one way or another to meet certification requirements. This process takes many months & involves much actual test flying. The much maligned MCAS was a tweak to meet an obscure certification requirement that was probably never going to be encountered in the life of the airplane. A lot of effort over decades has gone into making the aircraft as safe & foolproof in operation as possible. But, how do you design for an airline that flies an aircraft for three days with unreliable airspeed, maintenance that then compounds the problem with a bad AOA installation, & flight crews that still try to complete the flight with a continuous stick shaker? We don't know yet about Ethiopian, but if it was the same malfunction after all the warnings & publicity worldwide from Lion Air, then that is the height of incompetence.