None of the incidents described in that article were related to MCAS.

That we know of. @:-)

{{NOTE: This post was an attempt to focus the discussion of the thread at

-- Should-United-Cancel-Its-Order-100-737-Max-10s-Order-a321neo?

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...r-a321neo.html


The post got transferred here because the Mod was trying to focus the discussion on should UA change aircraft? So when the post was transferred here, it borught over the quted language of "should UA change aircraft? " which is the other thread .......................}}

Great video.

The cabin width of the737 was set nearly 65 years ago with the 707, based on passengers born in the Great Depression & with a human body frame impacted by the food rationing during WW II. If you can remember, or if too young, imagine, the passengers were a lot thinner then. Today getting into a 737 is like trying to squeeze into a pair of pants that should have been discarded 15 years ago. The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are gone, and United needs a bigger pair of pants, maybe the A321neo & some A220s.

No. I read the cited ASRS reports. The events in the article were not related to any MCAS issues.

There have been no unscheduled MCAS activations recorded on the DFDRs of US airline MAX flights. That data would be collected in the FOQA programs which download the DFDR data and is used to monitor and improve flight safety.

The complaints appear to be about stalls. Isn't MCAS there to prevent stalls? Wouldn't the non-activation of MCAS also be an issue if it was supposed to fire, and didn't?

As a lowly pax, I just don't want my plane stalling in the air. And I don't want pilots having to juggle a bunch of new systems on an hour of training just so a new plane can stay on a 50-year-old type certification. <shrugs>

Beleive this post, https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30881884-post317.html, dissected the same set of reports.

Has it been determined that MCAS does not function with flaps or autopilot? Boeing said no but what configuration was the Ethiopian flight in?

There is a presumption being made by some that the previously reported events cannot be MCAS because Boeing said so. They also told the FAA .6 degrees but in reality that was a lie...they did not plan failure protections with one sensor vane....why is it not possible that a flap or autopilot configuration be ignored by MCAS?....cuz Boeing said so?

Which I commented on.

The "dissection" of the complaints went into besmirching at least one of the pilots who made a complaint.

The MCAS is specifically a system designed to mimic the feel of the 737NG for a human pilot. (Think: cornering in a sports car vs. a family sedan). The autopilot doesn't care about the feel of the plane.

The sad irony here is that it's the A320 series that's fully fly-by-wire, not the 737. The scenario that many of you seem to be envisioning -- some sort of malicious / untested / defective automated component crashing the plane while human pilots are helpless to stop it -- is infinitely more plausible with an A321 than it is with a 737 MAX, because the 737 MAX has hydraulic (manual) controls, whereas the A321 does not. In fact, the A320 series will ignore a pilot's instruction to go outside of normal flight operations unless it's been placed into override mode. On the 737, the pilot always has the option to disconnect the fly-by-wire systems and fly the plane manually, barring something completely catastrophic happening in the air.

A lot of news articles out there continue to state that the MAX’s new larger engines closer to the front of the plane tend to force the nose up. Is this an accurate statement, and if it is, do airplanes like the A320neo, 757 and 787 have the same nose up tendency because of their larger engines?

Ah, a newcomer to the thread ......

The others don't have to worry about that because they have a MUCH higher ground clearance

737 not being FBW has more to do with it being a 60 years old design rather than Boeing intentionaly providing a flight safety feature. All new 787, 777X, 797 are fully FBW.

A320 has mechanical backups and direct law controls.

Obviously some Boeing pilots cannot even identify when to disconnect FBW, because undocumented intermittend nose-down trimming exceeding elevator authority has different symptoms from runnaway trim procedure they train for.

I remember back in the late 1960s seeing those Untied 737s with those smaller long engines with lots of ground clearance. Then in the mid 1980s seeing the737-300 with a lot less engine ground clearance and odd shape.

Well, no 777X has been delivered, and the 797 hasn't even been designed yet. The 787 is fully FBW (no mechanical backup systems). I do agree that the 797 is likely to be fully FBW; I'm not sure about the 777X -- it likely depends upon how much of it is new design and how much is recycled from the 777, and I wasn't able to find those details quickly.

That said, my point wasn't that FBW systems are unsafe, or even that the mechanical backup system is an intentional safety feature, although Boeing marketed it as such for years after the introduction of the A320. Rather, the point is that the scenario some people are describing -- the plane crashing itself into the ground with the pilot unable to prevent it -- is virtually impossible on a 737 MAX specifically because it's not FBW.