3 ms·

There are lots of commercial aircraft that don’t meet certification requirements without some form of artificial stability enhancement (yaw dampers being the cl

• dataflow 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, which airliners are like this?
  • foldr 6y ago
    The Boeing 727 is one example where the yaw damping systems are an important feature. Yaw dampers in general are very common. Most (all?) airliners have them in one form or another. The reason for this is that swept wings inherently tend to increase susceptibility to Dutch roll. And yet we don't conclude from this that it's inherently irresponsible of aircraft manufacturers to make airliners with swept wings.
    • dataflow 6y ago
      Interesting, thanks!
• tschwimmer 6y ago
  Perhaps this is overly simplistic, but I can't imagine it's preferable from a safety perspective to have stability enhancement vs just having inherent stability.
  • foldr 6y ago
    It's not. The point is that virtually no transport category aircraft have inherent stability in all dimensions of the flight envelope, as this would require too many compromises in other areas. There's nothing unusual about the extent to which the 737-MAX relies on stability enhancement. There are existing commercial airliners that are far more dependent on it for safety. For example, the Boeing 727 has two redundant yaw dampers because failure of both yaw dampers would result in the aircraft becoming irrecoverably uncontrollable at certain altitudes. In contrast, if your removed MCAS from the 737-MAX it would still be completely flyable.