3 ms·
Because MCAS never assumes the input sensors could be faulty.
by dannyw 8y ago
Because MCAS never assumes the input sensors could be faulty.
- pishpash 8y agoSounds like a shitty and incompetent design. Grounding the plane was the right decision.
- ody4242 8y agoTotally agree.
- achandlerwhite 8y agoI agree, but I see the reasoning. MCAS failure leads to runaway trim for which there is an established and well known procedure to fix--in the checklist almost 50 years. For a problem with trim you flip the trim cutout switch. Doesn't matter if the problem stems from MCAS, autopilot, crossed wires, the magentic pole flipping, jammed electric motor, whatever. It's like explaining to a computer user that rebooting will fix aproblem--they don't need to know the exact cause but just how to recover from it.
- _archon_ 8y agoIt's worse than this. MCAS is designed to only look at one of the two AoA sensors. If this happens to be faulty, it doesn't know, because it's not comparing the sensor to the other one. Instead of a system which can notice and account for disagreeing sensors and fail gracefully, we have a system which is a designed single point of failure and fails... lethally.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoYou can't handle faults with only two sensors since you won't know which one to trust. At least three would be needed for a minimal level of redundancy.
- __turbobrew__ 8y agoYou can handle faults by disabling the MCAS system which is a lot better than the current solution of diving the nose into the ground.