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>First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane At least in that case. But it isn't normal that you blindly trust a sensor, n

>First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane At least in that case. But it isn't normal that you blindly trust a sensor, not even Level D (failure is unimportant and easy to deal with) Software would/should do that. It actually takes a significant effort to put Software into a plane, which only increases with safety requirements. The chain of failure which needed to happen in this case is enormous. Dozens of people need to have looked at the documentation and nobody cared/figured out this blatant security issue. How can a company like Boeing even operate like that?

CyanBird 4y ago
> which only increases with safety requirements Yes, safety requirements which include the double buffer of two trained and experienced human pilots being in physical command of the plane double checking themselves and the software/hardware
- constantcrying 4y ago
  >Yes, safety requirements which include the double buffer of two trained and experienced human pilots being in physical command of the plane double checking themselves and the software/hardware A lot of hardware/software is totally automatic and it would be insane if it were constantly checked by humans. Of course none of these systems running totally automatic have the ability to push thevplane into the ground based on faulty sensor data. My point was that the failure of the MCAS was institutional, you should not be able to bring software like that onto a plane. On the topic of the number of pilots my thoughts are that the redundancy is for the most part only neccessarry in exceptional situations. But exactly those situations are the ones in which the best thing a plane can usually do is graceful failure and handing control to the crew, which can far more easily overwhelm a single pilot.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > Of course none of these systems running totally automatic have the ability to push the plane into the ground based on faulty sensor data. The yaw damper does. There was another crash where the autothrottle was reading data from only one of the radio altimeters, which was giving false data. At 400ft altitude the autothrottle thought the airplane was landing, and pulled the throttles back to idle. The airplane pancaked into the ground. All avionics software that has control authority can crash the airplane. What was wrong with MCAS was its reliance on only one sensor, and no way to tell if the sensor was faulty. That's not an issue with the concept of MCAS.

CyanBird 4y ago

> which only increases with safety requirements Yes, safety requirements which include the double buffer of two trained and experienced human pilots being in physical command of the plane double checking themselves and the software/hardware

constantcrying 4y ago
>Yes, safety requirements which include the double buffer of two trained and experienced human pilots being in physical command of the plane double checking themselves and the software/hardware A lot of hardware/software is totally automatic and it would be insane if it were constantly checked by humans. Of course none of these systems running totally automatic have the ability to push thevplane into the ground based on faulty sensor data. My point was that the failure of the MCAS was institutional, you should not be able to bring software like that onto a plane. On the topic of the number of pilots my thoughts are that the redundancy is for the most part only neccessarry in exceptional situations. But exactly those situations are the ones in which the best thing a plane can usually do is graceful failure and handing control to the crew, which can far more easily overwhelm a single pilot.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > Of course none of these systems running totally automatic have the ability to push the plane into the ground based on faulty sensor data. The yaw damper does. There was another crash where the autothrottle was reading data from only one of the radio altimeters, which was giving false data. At 400ft altitude the autothrottle thought the airplane was landing, and pulled the throttles back to idle. The airplane pancaked into the ground. All avionics software that has control authority can crash the airplane. What was wrong with MCAS was its reliance on only one sensor, and no way to tell if the sensor was faulty. That's not an issue with the concept of MCAS.