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I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
Original Lion Air flight that had problems had an off-duty captain who found the solution, and the next flight the co-pilot didn't put as much effort in while the captain tried to find a suitable checklist.
https://leehamnews.com/2019/03/22/bjorns-corner-the-ethiopian-airlines-flight-302-crash-part-2/
Not only is the aircraft unstable at high AOA due to the larger engines causing additional pitch-up, to which MCAS was the 'solution', but at high speed the elevators may lose effectiveness due to being unable to overcome the aerodynamic forces, so the aircraft will dive further and thus speed up even more. If so this would exactly explain the increasing speed and increasingly steep dive on the charts for both crashes, from which the pilots could not recover.
Both of these are very dangerous positive-feedback characteristics which are in contravention of basic civil aircraft design principles and safety regulations. If so then the Max is done for, since it's simply unsafe.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That there seems to be no way to switch off all the augmentation in an emergency and let the pilot fly the damned aircraft.
The only incident that didn't result in a crash was the one with THREE aircrew on the flight deck! That strongly implies that the answer to the OP question is 'yes'.
I don't think the answer is yes for every aircraft in fact, but the Max seems to be a mess, needing band-aid fixes to an inherent lack of flyability.
http://jeffwise.net
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It seems that there was a way to disable it but the pilots weren't told how to and they couldn't work out what they needed to disable fast enough.
It wouldn't really have helped, even if they did disable it they wouldn't be able to fly very effectively as the aerodynamics would be completely unfamiliar.
Obviously, commensurate with that, there needs to be thorough training to fly the aircraft without those systems active.
I think the initial issue here was who's flying the plane, the aerodynamic problems only added to it later.
All passenger aircraft should have a basic level of aerodynamic flyability. This isn't a fighter that needs to be unstable to do it's job and needs a computer to make it flyable.
There's a parallel with modern cars here, with complex software that interprets the drivers commands for emissions and suchlike. The difference is that there's no 'limp-home' mode for an aircraft.
I agree completely, Boeing essentially got the old 737, changed the way it flew, added a computer to fix it, didn't test the computer, didn't make it clear to the pilots and did this all to save a bit of money.
In future I think I'll fly Airbus.
and made the safety features that might have alerted the crew 'optional extras'. Unbelievable.
The connivance between the FAA and Boeing is a stain on both organisations that's going to take a long time to fade.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
This chap, a 737 Training Captain, explains it well:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xixM_cwSLcQ
Chips are "Plant-based" no matter how you cook them
Donald Trump needs kicking out of a helicopter
I'm personally responsible for all global warming
So yes, you can disable it, but it would appear that when it activates, it activates far faster than a typical trim runaway. Now when you're dealing with a stick shaker, and trying to work out why you've got a stick shaker, you have MCAS pushing the nose down far faster than you've ever been trained to handle.
The big question I want answered, is why did the pilots on both crashes manage to contain the problem with trim, yet once things got really bad, couldn't trim the nose up. I suspect there is more to the crashes than simply MCAS pushing the nose down, and that's without considering how Boeing came to use this sticking plaster approach to maintain grandfather rights.
Catch-22.
Boeing have absolutely hoist themselves by their own petard, and if the Max is ever going to fly again in its current form it will probably have to be fully re-certified as a new aircraft type, which it always should have been in the first place. And even that's not a certainty since it contravenes a couple of basic stability regulations.
There's far too much in this thread to read it all really, but this has been gone round again and again - http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1417545
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I also thought the other main issue is that although yes it is possible to disable the system, it requires “quick action” and the procedure to do it isn’t that straightforward. Plus the fact that a lot of pilots seemingly either weren’t trained to do it or just didn’t know.