Originally Posted by
Easy Street
Well, if you don’t have any pilots, you don’t need to worry about stick force gradient (which is where MCAS came in), and with direct control of power and attitude the computers could be programmed to avoid the envelope corners which cause the problem. I’m not saying I agree with the premise, or that the 737 is equipped with sufficient air data sensors to implement in this case, but there is at least some logic there.
You are right in your assessment. I doubt that it will be used as an argument for the Max - but expect new designs to be more autonomous and have less requirement for pilots to pick up the pieces of systems failures. Autonomy is improving all the time with fewer cases that the automated systems cannot handle. The costs of making aircraft simple to fly by human pilots in exceptions (all specified in FARs) is approaching the same levels of cost and complexity of building autonomous aircraft that meet DAL-A. Once it is the same or cheaper to build aircraft that are DAL-A and fully autonomous and that are safe in all failure modes, do not expect any support from aircraft operators for aircraft to be designed for pilots.