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The details provided by the article read rather badly for Boeing for several reasons. Firstly, I think the whole issue is not going away any time soon which is

by jussij 8y ago

The details provided by the article read rather badly for Boeing for several reasons. Firstly, I think the whole issue is not going away any time soon which is bad enough. But what looks worse is the article points to high levels of incompetence, if not gross negligence in the design and testing of the MCAS. Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them. Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off. Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero. I can see this headed to the courts and if the details in the article are found to be correct, there's a good chance Boeing would be up for a rather big settlement, not to mention a massive dent to their reputation

dboreham 8y ago
I think the underlying problem is that a control system was designed with the assumption that its purpose was to make the pilot force feedback feel right, for regulatory compliance reasons. Therefore it was designed with low reliability requirements, presumably on the basis that if it doesn't work, no biggie because it's only there to make the controls feel right, and that only happens when the plane is about to stall, which never happens... Then...it turned out that when this control system malfunctions (which is can, quite often, due to aforementioned low reliability requirements), it will actually crash the plane. The lesson is probably: make sure that some system you're designing with low reliability characteristics (only uses one sensor, doesn't have redundant power supplies...) will fail with safe or benign outcomes.

by jussij 8y ago

dboreham 8y ago

I think the underlying problem is that a control system was designed with the assumption that its purpose was to make the pilot force feedback feel right, for regulatory compliance reasons. Therefore it was designed with low reliability requirements, presumably on the basis that if it doesn't work, no biggie because it's only there to make the controls feel right, and that only happens when the plane is about to stall, which never happens... Then...it turned out that when this control system malfunctions (which is can, quite often, due to aforementioned low reliability requirements), it will actually crash the plane. The lesson is probably: make sure that some system you're designing with low reliability characteristics (only uses one sensor, doesn't have redundant power supplies...) will fail with safe or benign outcomes.