Originally Posted by
WillowRun 6-3
Appendix A, Item 6: Mr. Forkner requested any and all evidence, including witness statements, that MCAS and MCAS’s expansion to low speeds was not material to the decision about what level of pilot training should be required for the 737-MAX. Such evidence is obviously exculpatory, since it would negate a critical element of each of the charges against Mr. Forkner. The government, however, simply referred us to “the interview reports and agent notes in this case, including those for both FAA and U.S.-based airlines’ personnel.” In line with the principles set forth above, the government should be compelled to specifically identify the witnesses who made such statements and the particular statements that they made, rather than simply pointing to a mass of discovery.
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Now that is an interesting turn of events.
I don't believe that the FAA acted with malice or otherwise, but I can state categorically that the issue of stability arising in the flight test was pretty much known by the govt, and it seems pretty mean spirited to hold to account Mr Forkner when te FAA was aware that a problem had arisen and had been fixed in the flight test. The FAA asserts that it had awareness of the MCAS as a stability matter in the pre-first flight high-speed wind-up case, but not later, yet, they were aware of a stability issue in the flight test phase of certification.
I think that chasing a pawn (Forkner) and letting the bosses literally get away with the deaths of 346 people due to their greed is unconscionable. I also think that the FAA staff are professional but have had poor "corporate" guidance and have been placed in an untenable position.
As an outsider I was aware of a stability issue that came up in testing, I had to play "who am I?" to work out what the issue was, and then to put in a white paper about whether the Max would behave the same with my own STC as all of the others in the line-up. It was not rocket science to work back and guess the issue that had cropped up, if I had been doing the PSCP, that would have been one of the more obvious issues to raise. In the end, our STC mod would not alter the outcome of the Max, and how Boeing had dealt with the stick force gradient was never disclosed to us, and nor should it have been. Pity.
I have suggested previously, that the Max longitudinal stability issue could have been mitigated by reducing the nacelle vane size, and any "economic" losses could have been more than compensated by TBC through some minor alteration of the TE of the flaps. The upside of doing the TE mod would be to reduce cruise drag, (ask Joe Sutter... ) and a slight shift rearwards of CP in the inner wing area, while shifting the spanwise lift distribution inboard, they happen to cancel each other out, and can be tuned to give eye-pleasing static stability at least. That mod would also improve the wing bending moment for the sluf design, which is getting pretty long in the fangs. The TE mod also happens to stabilize the loads on the flap tracks that the renditions of the 737 have always suffered from. Randolph's treatise on that little bit of design is good bedtime readin', while you are awaiting the gators to come up in the spotlights of the F-150 dual cab (dual cab as you can put more gun racks in there, cuz what's the fun of being outgunned by a hedgehog...., god bless the 2nd amendment, but 'scuze me, the term regulated militia seems to have slipped from the old parchment in it's readin'.) The Vs1g speed gets reduced, which is good for the clown in Chicago who apparently has a laser focus on shareholder value, and the most annoying thing about the B737 (not just my opinion, ask Pete K.C. Rudolph)#, reducing the approach speed to a manageable value would be nice and save some RESA rebuilding.
The corporate management of Boeing since 1997 at least gives ideas for what to do with goats other than curry and fetta cheese.
I doubt that Mr Forkner held his breath for 5 years in a vacuum, yet that is what the charges against him are apparently expecting the jury to believe.
I hope Boeing starts a greenfield single-aisle aircraft, one that has a round barrel, that takes LD-3's and uses CFRP rationally. Given the history, I would be placing my bet on Airbus instead.
# Rudolph, Peter K.C., High-Lift Systems on Commercial Subsonic Airliners, NASA Contractor Report 4746, Nasa Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, CA, Sept 1996 Contract A46374D(LAS)