3 ms·
I don't think it's quite that simple. In the case of the Lion Air flight, one of the AoA sensors had been recently replaced due to problems on an earlier fligh
by cperciva 8y ago
I don't think it's quite that simple. In the case of the Lion Air flight, one of the AoA sensors had been recently replaced due to problems on an earlier flight; in the case of the Air France flight, there were icing conditions which were known to affect the airspeed sensors.
It's possible that both of those flights could have been saved given better awareness of how much those sensors could be trusted at the time -- for example, if Lion Air's engineers, upon fiddling with AoA sensors, had been able to tell the avionics systems "the AoA sensors might be unreliable; don't do anything automatically based on those sensors which might crash the plane".
- laydn 8y agoIt is difficult to understand the design decisions made on these complex software systems without any real domain knowledge, but one can't help but wonder whether this whole MCAS system is pushed into the field prematurely. For example, we know that the flight control computer has access to altitude information. Why would it let the MCAS push the nose down, when it knows that you have very little altitude margin? (I am talking about the Lion Air flight).
- sokoloff 8y agoPreventing a stall at low altitudes is arguably more important than preventing one at high altitudes. The MCAS is a compensation for extra powerful engines. Those engines are most powerful at low altitudes as well.
- laydn 8y agoThat is correct, but remember that the aircraft wasn't stalling, the AoA sensor was bad.
- xeromal 8y agoI think the problem is that this whole automatic system is to prevent crashes because the engines change how the plane behaves compared to a normal 737 which is the training Boing was trying to avoid in the first place. So for them to turn off the automatic system, they really need to be training on how to fly this variant of the 737.