Originally Posted by
Chronus
It remains an inescapable fact, meaning as in the sense of a reality, that the introduction of a software based modification became a necessary in order to get this plane certified. That must have been considered as the most optimal solution to achieve the commercial aims of introducing a plane that could be competitive to others on the market, namely the Airbus offerings. The B737 had to be kept alive to do that. But how could it be possible to keep a plane designed half a century ago may still be fit for today`s world of aviation. The Douglas DC10 was also an all time winner, but can you imagine kitting it out with the latest high ratio by pass turbo fans of today, installing some fancy computers and software in it and saying here is the answer to short haul commuter, so long as you can get your pax to don their oxy masks if we hit some bad wx. Not really all that much different to saying the B737 MAX is more than safe as is, but just to make sure no airline has sat a pair of morons up front, we have with our clever MCAS thingy tell the computer how to handle them. Now if that does not make sense as to why they put in this MCAS thingy majig, then why did they do it in the first place. That of course takes us back to where we started, which then means we got nowhere and that is the whole purpose of the whole exercise.
With the exception of the hull, the MAX is an entirely different aircraft than the original B737-100 or even the NG’s. Different wing, engines, avionics, APU, landing gear, etc. If they called it a B797 would that makes things better?
The same can be said of the B747. Today's 800 series ain’t the B747-100 of 1969. Same thing, new engines, wing, avionics, APU, etc. Is anyone trashing Boeing for that? And, for all we know, the B747-800 might have the odd bandaid too for some obscure issue just like the MAX.