Boeing and the FAA have reluctantly accepted that something somehow needs to be done with respect to a potentially deadly MAX quirk. Most of everybody’s effort these months goes into remedying that.
Boeing and the FAA appear to keep quiet as to some other certification aspect that has been successfully swept under the rug when the NG was created, or let’s say, developed.
The two MAX accidents however now have pulled the whole rug away.
The use of the manual trim wheel to tame the beast when some hardware failure opened its cage was never a particular practical solution, but in the present time it has become even more out of place than 50 years ago. Also, the trim wheels have been made even smaller when the NG came about. The NG, that notably introduced a larger wing and an increased span stabilizer.
No crashes have put this silently accepted anomaly on the table. On the contrary, the NG has an admirable safety record. But it still cheated by pointing out it’s grandfather rights rather than adhering to state-of-the-art standards. Now the question is whose signatures will appear under the conclusion that the exemplary safety record allows waiving this uncovered certification hole, as well as which other authorities will be willing to agree? This would be unbelievably unprecedented.
On top of that, if two pilots can in some conditions already have problems with the manual trim wheel as a last resort, what about the situation when one of them is out of the cockpit on a personal needs break? A suddenly rogue airplane is supposed to remain controllable by the temporary cruise minimum of one pilot. Because, logically, during cruise a single pilot shall be able to initially tame the beast. It is my understanding that both the grounded MAX and the 5000 still operational NGs fail to satisfy this criterion.
And it’s not a software thing.
Last edited by Plumb Bob; 15th Oct 2019 at 04:32.
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