> The thought of flying on a commercial airliner with no inherent stability, akin to a fighter jet, is horrifying to me. What hysteria. Relaxed static stabil

> The thought of flying on a commercial airliner with no inherent stability, akin to a fighter jet, is horrifying to me. What hysteria. Relaxed static stability, or some degree of longitudinal static instability (not the same as "no inherent stability") is one potential option for reducing fuel consumption and emissions in future aircraft configurations (as correctly pointed out by multiple commenters, the 737 Max is not designed this way). To what degree that's safe depends on how the artificial stability is maintained in the presence of individual and common-mode failures. For a long time, orthodoxy and knee-jerk thinking precluded long-range transport on only two engines, or fly-by-wire, or primarily composite airframes. With decades of engineering and actual data behind them, these have now become standard. Michael Crichton's Airframe treats this kind of knee-jerk thinking, and the dangers inherent in using terms like "stability" that have a huge gap between laypersons' perception and engineers' understanding.