screeton

The "new design" places the engines in a different location which reportedly increases fuel efficiency and thus profits. Boeing design engineers obviously understood that some system would be needed to mitigate this center of gravity imbalance. Hopefully a safe fix can be developed, sooner than later. I share the concern of others about whether the US Government (FAA) in the present situation/administration is willing to gamble safety; once the preliminary findings from the latest crash black boxes are analyzed, we will find out.

Ditka

lougord99

[QUOTE=darrenpb;30874544 Why did the manufacturer design a revision to the older "safe" 737 series, resulting in the Max series, that took the original "safe" design and made it "unsafe" by shifting the center of gravity to what sounds to me as an out of balance location, having to add an additional automated system to mitigate the decrease in safety? Why did the designer not redesign the aircraft to shift the center of gravity back to a "safe" location that did not require an automated system to keep the new "unsafe" Max8 design "safe"?[/QUOTE]

It would require an entire redesign - an entire new airplane - which would be hugely expensive ( and just would not have happened ). They took a significant part of the 737 and simply made the changes necessary to achieve their goal.

nsx

The new, more efficient engines have a larger diameter. It doesn't fit under the wing in the same position as the smaller engine. Therefore the designers moved it forward to maintain ground clearance.

LegalTender

Stall recovery being possibly made worse by the engine nacelles forward of the CofG.

darrenpb

So . . . It appears to me then that they traded safety for lower operating costs via a larger, more fuel efficient engine . . . . that doesn't fit properly on the existing aircraft design.

NoStressHere

There we go.

We have the issue solved and done.

ursine1

​​​​​​No, lol, but we have the core issue identified.

This of course led to Boeing introducing a new automated system to correct for these issues. But not telling anyone that the system existed or requiring any new specific training in the new system. A system that only came to light after the first 100% fatal crash, which was (apparently) caused by it.

To solve the problem (according to the FAA) Boeing will need to update the software on all existing Max aircraft, and specify new training requirements. This will now be mandated by April.

Hope that clarifies things.
​​​

dlaue

No, they could not find an engineer who knew how to run a slide rule, the tool upon which the original 737 was designed.

darrenpb

Okay. Please correct me if I am wrong here. My conclusion is based on what I am reading on this board.

It appears that we have a new aircraft whose aerodynamics were purposely designed to be unstable/unsafe to some degree to accommodate an engine too big for the aircraft . . . that an electronic correction system was added to the aircraft to monitor and counteract problems arising from the aerodynamic instability of the aircraft during flight . . . . . .when the correction system is working properly . . . . that is potentially catastrophic when it malfunctions.

737MAX8

1. It's called a 737 MAX 8, there is no such thing as an 800 MAX

2. Plug your flight number in flightradar24, within a day or two of the flight is has the actual tail number assigned and updates pretty frequently. It's the best source outside of SWA.

diburning

Despite that, if people want to make choices based on ignorance of information (or reaction to the lack thereof), they still have the right to make that choice.

The center of gravity does not have to be balanced. Ideally a balanced CoG would improve handling characteristics, but aircraft can and do fly with the CofG imbalanced, and it's not unsafe. Some aircraft are designed this way. For example, the CRJ family all have the center of gravity in front of the wings (nose heavy). On flights that aren't full, passengers may be asked to move rearward so that the captain could have better handling characteristics while in the air. But, the aircraft needs to be designed to fly on an imbalanced center of gravity in order to be efficient while doing so. Cargo versions of aircraft for example, are designed to have their center of gravity closest to balanced. The cargo versions of the A330 have a hump where the nose gear used to be because the plane was originally nose heavy. They put the hump there to level out the aircraft so that the center of gravity is balanced at takeoff, and so that they're not going uphill when loading the aircraft.

The correction system was not to correct unstable aerodynamics. The aerodynamics are probably not unstable. The handling quality of the aircraft has changed from the previous models of the 737. A captain who is proficient at hand flying a 737-800, attempting to fly the MAX8 the same way, would pitch the nose up due to the change in center of gravity. The MCAS exists so that if the captain doesn't notice or understand why the nose pitched up when it should be business as usual, the system would put the nose down before the plane stalls. This system appears to be the one that malfunctioned on the Lion Air flight.

Now if you want to see a correction system that corrects unstable aerodynamics, look at the 787. They have a correction system that's active at all times to mitigate wing flutter due to the wings' flexibility.

smmrfld

Admiral Ackbar

EASA just banned the 7M8 from the entire european airspace, now it just got real. 7M8 is toast.

screeton

With the European Union grounding the MAX8, it seems inevitable that the entire fleet will soon be grounded, as well it should. Southwest could have led the carriers in this country in this regard and gotten good publicity by publicizing a corporate decision to err on the side of absolute passenger safety. I wasn't flying SWA back then, but wonder if this would have this have been handled differently in Herb days?