Originally Posted by
djfsheehan
Listened to the D.P. Davies audios last week just as the 737 Max groundings took effect. His comments made back in '92 on Boeings rather looser view on acceptable stall characteristics and the Boeing / FAA coziness around certification seem remarkably prescient ! In fairness to Boeing he also praises them in many other ways.
Yes indeed. Having finally listened to the four podcasts, one can see at least one reason why the RAeS might have waited 25 years before making them available to all and sundry. Davies's overall praise for Boeing is qualified only by his forthright criticism, as you point out, of its and other manufacturers' relationship with the FAA, particularly in respect of B727 and DC-10 certification. The original UK certification of the B737, OTOH, seems to have gone so smoothly that he doesn't describe any of it. One wonders what he would have made of the more recent developments of the type, particularly the expedient used to mount the LEAP engines in the MAX.
He was clearly unimpressed with the performance, late in his career, of non-pilot colleagues in reversing his original insistence, years earlier, that a stall-ident/stick-pusher be fitted to the UK-certificated B727-100, just as had been done many years earlier for the Trident/VC10/One-Eleven.
On a personal note, his comparison of the relative degrees of difficulty of flying the B707 and VC10 resonated. And his description of the pre-stall buffet on the VC10 took me back to an air-test in which the stick-pusher simply would not operate. Disappointing for me - and perhaps for him - that he never tested an Airbus type.