MCAS / Fudge - 6 one half a dozen the other.
When are all you guys from the deluded "it can't happen to me", "it's pilot error", "they were incompetent", "they were not properly trained" camp going to waken up & smell the wreak here - which is so much more unpleasant than coffee! Regardless of what you may have concluded occurred in the cockpit from the available information, you simply don't know & never will know the whole story. We already know that at least some of the data available is junk / error / erroneous. Basing your opinions on the available data to hold these poor pilots responsible for the deaths of all involved is simply ridiculous, naive & morally wrong.
The time critical situation that the pilots were put in simply does not give enough time to work through & rigorously adhere to checklists & doing so may have killed them even more quickly, especially considering the complex interaction of several systems where a multitude of variables are possible & outcomes numerous. The various procedures involved is successful recovery would appear to be too complex for a normal, qualified pilot & completely inadequate at low level when time is critical - too much to p*** about with & not enough time to do it. It also appears that depending on some circumstances, normally accepted procedures may just be trap doors at low level.
Fudge 1 - Out of sight;
Shoving MCAS so far into the background so as to avoid certification & training issues (translate to cost / money). Someone / lots of someone's at Boeing surely knew that it was mistake to have MCAS quietly installed given the authority it has. "Yea guys, it's nothing, just a few tick boxes on a tablet & we are good to go" - 346 lives in less than five months suggests otherwise.
Fudge 2 - The implementation of MCAS;
Complete authority over life & death on the basis of a single sensor input (sensor, wiring, ADIRU or software).
"How will we activate this thing guys?"
"Just wire it to an AOA sensor"
"What if the AOA sensor or data is faulty?"
I mean, seriously what was after that "They don't go faulty" or "don't ask expensive questions"
"MCAS doesn't seem to work as well as we had hoped boss, should we consider an appropriate aerodynamic fix?"
"Just increase its authority by a factor of 4 or more & stop asking expensive questions"
Apart from Boeing test pilots does anyone really know how pronounced the decreasing input forces with increasing AOA really are? Is it as simple as decreasing input force or is there more to it, such as a lack of authority????
The fact that there seem to be so many differing opinions on the workings & capability of the trim & stab systems from apparent ticketed 737 drivers is concerning, as is the suggestion that that any 737 trim system may become ineffective under certain situations & that spinning the wheels will either be ineffective or impossible.
I cant help seeing MCAS as anything other than a dangerous fudge that was implemented in consideration of sales & profit. That the manufacturer would have been unaware of the potential unintended consequences is not something that I can believe.
737NG's certification was issued on the basis of improved, high accuracy production methods, yet Ducommun were using the high tech sledgehammer method. How many NG's are flying at their maximum certified altitude without the high accuracy parts required for this?
787 - the box fix....
Now 737 Max....
It seems that proper, retrospective fixes are expensive. I don't have a dog in A, B or any other camp, just saying what I see in regards to B at the moment.
Last edited by Thrust Augmentation; 14th Apr 2019 at 17:58.