Originally Posted by
ecto1
I see more and more posts selecting solutions which are strictly inside the coordinates of what we "know" it is possible. (EG: more training, software patch...) and not seriously mentioning much better / obvious ones.
I say: listen to people from other industries. What we sometimes believe impossible in terms of complexity / cost / time may not be so.
It's time to roll up our sleeves and produce good computer systems for planes. Systems in which sensor signals jumping straight up to off - the - scale - high are automatically rejected and have zero impact. For a start. Updating whichever rules as we go to keep a cheap but much safer solution.
We totally know how to do it right, it's just we forbid ourselves to do it by all sorts of rules and bureaucracy. Let's not accept another band aid.
Somebody wrote many pages ago he spent 30 years in the industry and failed to change substandard quality. Sorry I forgot who. But to him and everyone else, we have to keep fighting, as futile as it may be. It's simply what we have to do.
Or we could get rid of the grandfathering loophole that Boeing and the FAA have abused, where software has been used as a bandaid. A320/ B787 etc that were designed to make full use of computer systems from the ground up are fine. It is the unholy mixing of digital & analogue on the MAX that is the issue.
Would a similar AOA failure on an NG cause a crash? Almost certainly not.
In my opinion, Boeing & FAA have stretched the definition of a derivative aircraft beyond what is reasonable. What will be interesting will be impact on 777X, I am guessing FAA will be reviewing all assumptions on that now, and we might even see the end of "NG" derivative programmes (as opposed to stretches) with authorities insisting that if you build a new plane, it meets current standards. This is how it works in contruction. Sure, you don't have to rebuild a 40 year old building to new standards, but you can't say "this design met earthquake standards in 1990, so I can just build a derivative of it"