[danjayh]

You clearly have absolutely no background in aerospace engineering. The 737 airframe is actually relatively stable compared to many other things that fly ... for instance, many high-performance jets will literally begin to oscillate and tear themselves apart without help from their flight computers. The flight computer is a part of the airframe, and it is perfectly valid for the flight computer to contribute to the airframe's handling characteristics. Boeing's mistake was in underestimating the burden placed on the pilots in a runaway trim situation, and assuming that pilots could execute a recovery procedure correctly that remained unchanged from prior iterations but that had also been rarely needed on prior iterations (vs. the MAX, where MCAS failures were common enough that an average pilot might actually need to execute the procedure).

[bobowzki]

People like to bring up the instability of high performance jets, but I'd like to point out that they generally have ejection seats and don't carry passengers.

[varjag]

They also crash incredibly often by civil aviation standards.

[danjayh]

Airbus jets carry passengers and have been fly-by-wire for decades. Cables and hydraulics have been replaced with software and computers. Like it or not, the software and hardware that make up the flight computer are an integral part of the airframe on most newly produced passenger jets, regardless of who makes them.

[windexh8er]

> The 737 airframe is actually relatively stable compared to many other things that fly.

I agree, so where is your comparison of 737 Max and non-Max airframe? Because we have real data, including death toll, that shows one airframe is not like the other.

> Boeing's mistake was in underestimating the burden placed on the pilots in a runaway trim situation, and assuming that pilots could execute a recovery procedure correctly that remained unchanged from prior iterations but that had also been rarely needed on prior iterations (vs. the MAX, where MCAS failures were common enough that an average pilot might actually need to execute the procedure).

This is not the whole truth as we know in this situation MCAS 1.0 was a critical flight system with a non-redundant data source. The "burden" placed on pilots was that the system did not have sufficient and trustworthy information to prevent a faulty and inadequately designed system (MCAS) from crashing the airplane. Furthermore since MCAS is not required, again, on non-Max airframe it seems your assertion that you have background in aerospace engineering is egregious because you should understand all 737 Max are currently grounded because the 737 Max is not a 737 airframe and should be recertified as such.

[yardie]

If passenger planes had the failure rate of high performance jets we’d all be using boats and trains. The fact that high performance jets have ejection seats while passenger planes do not should clue you in that failure is anticipated.

[ulfw]

Please list all passenger airframes that would “tear themselves apart”. Should be easy for you to do considering your background in aerospace engineering.

[xchaotic]

High speed jet fighters flying above Mach speed doesn’t really compare with a chubby airliner flying 900km/h?

[tus88]

> The 737 airframe is actually relatively stable compared to many other things that fly

Nice strawman. We are talking about the MAX not the 737 in general.

Why don't you explain why previous variants of the 737 didn't require MCAS?

[VBprogrammer]

Why don't you explain why previous 737 versions have a Mach trim to prevent Mach tuck, or why it had a speed trim system to control the pitch force response to speed changes.

[bwilli123]

..."relatively stable compared to many other things that fly"...

Balloons, paper jets...