Inrequentflyer, 789
One particularly prescient poster, or an industry doomed to repeat history until it learns from it ?
Another quote from Collinson:
"The high integrity, full authority FBW can provide the automatic
stabilisation required to enable a civil aircraft to be designed
with reduced stability margins under certain loading configurations
and flight conditions. This enables a lighter aircraft to be produced
with an increased performance and payload capability compared with a
conventional design".
Weasel words. Saying that stability can be traded against cost and
performance, but are current designs going too far in this respect ?.
Note: "reduced stability requirements". This implies that when
the systems gives up, the aircraft will be more difficult to control
manually, than a non fbw aircraft. I think someone already mentioned
elsewhere that the a/c would be very sensitive to control inputs. Just
what's needed when confronted with an emergency situation with ambiguous
or unreliable data from the flight control systems and a crew with no
training or experience of such conditions.
On balance, correct me if wrong, once AF447 stalled, only a test pilot
with a lot of experience would have had any chance of recovery...