3 ms·
This sensor isn’t that important. You can fly the plane fine without it. The problem is when the sensor gives a bad reading and the system trusts it. Two senso
by mikeash 8y ago
This sensor isn’t that important. You can fly the plane fine without it. The problem is when the sensor gives a bad reading and the system trusts it.
Two sensors are enough to overcome that. If they disagree, ignore them both. The problem wasn’t that they only had two sensors, it was that they didn’t use them both simultaneously and ignore them when they disagreed.
- kalleboo 8y agoThe question is if MCAS is safety critical or not. To me it looks like there are two options: 1. Keep claiming the MAX has the same flight characteristics as previous 737 models, keep the type certification (=minimal pilot retraining) and classify MCAS as safety-critical and require a third AoA vane 2. Classify MCAS as not safety-critical, disengage it on a disagree between left and right, and require pilots take simulator training on MCAS failure modes and how to fly the plane without MCAS (in situations where it differs from previous 737 models) My guess is they'll take the 2 tack. At this point 1 might not even be an option - regulators would probably require MCAS training no matter what.
- salawat 8y agoThere's still a potential failure mode where both vanes get stuck at the same anomalous reading, so therefore still feed bad data to MCAS. There's more likely a threshold of equality rather than exact equality in measurement going on I'd imagine, but I'd have to see their code to know for sure what their definition of "equal" is.