I can't agree more. The existence of MCAS is a testament that the behavior of the plane wrt. to the pitch axis is vastly different. Handling this needs training and anyone doubting that please spend a moment on what happens when this savior MCAS has to be switched off. Yes, the pilots need to be able to handle the plane without. And they have to handle the plane at that point in time in an odd flight situation, are stressed themselves and have their hands on hypersensitive engine and rudder controls. Pilots train to handle airplanes with only one engine - there is a reason for that.
Anyone doubting that Boeing needs to have its authority wrt. to airplane certifications cut should ponder what they are proposing here.
The problem with the MCAS is that turning it off makes the plane illegal to fly. The MCAS is just a compliance trick. If the pilots had a choice they would just retrain to fly the new plane without MCAS but they aren't allowed to do that.
The whole point of MCAS was to avoid pilot retraining on the different handling characteristics. To say that you can just not have that system is also to say the pilots need to be retrained for the Max planes. Something that Boeing felt necessary to avoid and thus implementing this MCAS. Now that 2 planes have crashed you can't just say "Oh Okay just turn MCAS off duhhhhhhhhh".
Yeah. I don’t get it. If MCAS changes the way the plane flies, and MCAS can be switched off, don’t the pilots need to know how to fly the plane without MCAS? Then why even have MCAS?
What I'm saying is that the MCAS is there so the plane can get the certification. You can fly the plane without it but it's not considered normal (or safe) operation. Which is why it must be there and it must work.
You can fly a plane without an engine if needed but just try certifying a plane with one engine under one wing.
Yes but this is not a huge problem with the airframe itself. The tendencies without MCAS are fine. The pilots just need to be trained for them.
The problem was that airlines want to skimp on the training.
The same thing happened with the engine management. Boeing doesn't want to introduce an engine warning system because it would mean pilots have to be retrained. A lot of these barriers aren't part of the physical design but the industry as a whole being extremely wary of training. Probably as a result of cheap low-cost carriers emerging.
Not saying Boeing is a great manufacturer but it's not the only issue at play.
I'm with you on that. It also seems completely against the Boeing ethos of when the auto pilot is off you should be hand flying the plane and your control inputs dictate the movement of the flight surfaces. That has been a perceived difference in philosophy between Boeing and Airbus. MCAS sounds like a hastly thrown together work around and a disaster waiting to happen.
You're missing OP's point. MCAS was flawed, but the plane would have been fine if they hadn't added MCAS. It would just have required pilot retraining (which Boeing desperately wanted to avoid). I have never seen a reliable source for the claim that the handling characteristics without MCAS would fail to meet airworthiness requirements.
A compounding problem is, if the MCAS system is disable, now the flight characteristics are completely changed. Without additional training, there's no way for the pilots to know they have to trim down.
It’s not like the plane was uncontrollable without MCAS, it’s more that it did not fly like a 737-NG, and so would have required extra pilot training to compensate, which would have made the plane less attractive to airlines.
Great video. But he says the exact same thing I did. The MCAS is necessary because of the different engine placement. So the airplane cannot recover from a stall without it. That, to me, makes the entire airplane unstable and improper for commercial flights as this is an expected condition at times that the plane should be able to recover from. The airplane cannot function without a deeply flawed software system no one understands and no one knows how to operate. Changing the software doesn't change any of these things.
I'm starting to think that disabling MCAS isn't even a sane option because then the pilots are exposed to unexpected aerodynamic characteristics due to the plane's weird design. Does this make sense?
I think that is unlikely. MCAS was not put in place to avoid training, it is there to fix what would otherwise be an unacceptable handling issue. It was attempting to add MCAS without training that led to all the problems (not mentioning it, using only a single sensor...), and if Boeing could have done without it, it would have done so.
This is the part that bugs me as well. When you have to disable MCAS, you're flying a plane you've not trained for. Particularly given the fact MCAS featured prominently in the landing regime.
I would respectfully disagree. The reason for MCAS existing in the first place is, without it, the flight characteristics of the plane are quite a departure from the standard 737 and can be rather unstable. And the only reason Boeing did that was to circumvent some regulatory restrictions around airframe certification and pilot training. So, you're right in the sense that the MCAS was poorly implemented, but it was only required in the first place because of the abnormally sized engine. Well, not so much the size but the increased size with the same airframe caused it to be moved to a different part of the aircraft.
Well, yes: the plane is inherently unstable. That's why the MCAS system is there. The system itself is mostly fine, it does what it's intended to under ordinary conditions. The problem was that Boeing, in order to avoid costs to the buyer, declared that pilots did not require training on it and made the instrumentation that manages the system woefully inadequate to the task of handling malfunctions (plus the system relying on a single sensor is pretty brittle but adequate malfunction handling instruments would've mitigated that).
Anyone doubting that Boeing needs to have its authority wrt. to airplane certifications cut should ponder what they are proposing here.
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