Originally Posted by
Uplinker
I don't know why* Boeing didn't bring in FBW on the B737. Even if they did so only in pitch, it would have brought benefits such as auto pitch trim, no pitch/power couple, turning without needing to pull back; and MCAS would not have been needed - just a change of some variables in the software.
* well, of course, I do.
Didn't they add "FBW" for the spoilers in the MAX? Anything else probably would have required a re-design of the impacted flight control system that simply was too expensive, and would have taken too much time, always worth remembering that Boeing was in quite a desperate game of catching up to the order advantage Airbus had.
That said, what puzzled me at the time was the difference in testing program, although Boeing had to change quite a lot more on its new variant than Airbus had, Airbus did more than twice the number of test flight hours, which in itself does not say all that much of course, but it was a point i noted in passing.