Originally Posted by
retired guy
Hi Old Dogs
My guess is because after the AD post Lionair, it was known about and Boeing said “;treat it like a runaway stab” which most assuredly it is. “ Continuously” means without stopping, or a quick succession of similar events.
“my wife nags we continuously “. Presumably she draws breath between each bout of nagging? But it will eventually cause you to lose the will to live. And vice versa for the PC types. Men can nag too.
similarly a stabilizer which runs AND , over and over , always in the same direction, with a very short pause is by any definition in the dictionary “:Continuous” yes?
Especially since we all studied that AD assiduously post Lionair to make sure a similar fate would not befall us.
thats how we stay safe. Learn from others. These days more than ever we need to learn from the published errors which are available on line every day on the likes of of AV HERALD and AEROINSIDE free of charge.
Everyday I read about maybe 15/major incidents. Some handled brilliantly. Others leave something that might have been done much better. FYI every day there are around three engine failures and a rising number of smoke fume events- some really nasty. Loads of learning free of charge.
Safe Flying
R Guy
Actually no. The behaviour you describe, in a dictionary definition, is continu
al, not continu
ous.
https://grammarist.com/usage/continual-continuous/
The behaviour of MCAS in the crash flights was not continuous, but continual. The trigger for MCAS was a continuous incorrect signal from the AoA indicator relied upon by the MCAS software, but the effect was continual pitch down commands to the stabiliser, some of which, to complicate matters, were ignored/unactioned in the periods during which the stab trim was deselected manually.
The difference, in English, is important. Certainly, I would expect a technical manual to be written carefully and for the writer to understand the difference between continuous and continual when writing a diagnostic procedure.