Originally Posted by
Bbtengineer
I will stop after this but I’m not having it.
Requirements always come from somewhere else. That’s not special.
You don’t take a stupid requirement.
You don’t expect a civil engineer to take a stupid design from an architect. Seldom the same company.
You don’t expect the engine manufacturer to take a dangerous design from the airframe manufacturer. Not the same company.
The fact that it comes from a different place does not relieve your responsibility to understand and interpret it.
There is no universe, regardless ALL the things you said, in which commanding AND indefinitely forever makes sense. It’s fundamentally stupid.
No.
In other areas of industry, there are arms manufacturers, who make machines and devices specifically designed to kill people. With your logic, nobody would manufacture arms, because that would be "stupid", but sadly, here we are.
Architects have also made mistakes, and civil engineers have built them; Quite a few bridge and building collapses in history show that. And most recently in my recollection; the Grenfell Tower fire in London UK, where the insulation used in the construction of that tower-block was highly flammable. One day, a fire broke out and because of the flammable insulation, it rapidly spread and there was significant loss of life.
A software programmer might not have any idea about how aircraft fly, or what a pilot might or might not do with an aircraft. They might just be given a brief that, (in very simple terms); in situation X; if Y happens, the result needs to be Z.
A staff programmer with aviation experience and knowledge of aircraft failure modes etc, might possibly raise concerns or even objections, but they would be told by their bosses that this is what we want. Or maybe they were convinced by the competent pilot argument. But even then; they would not necessarily know that MCAS was not going to be even mentioned in the FCOM.