First, as reported variously, MCAS was not designed to correct pitch-up in climb mode. The issue was discovered in flight testing, and MCAS was handed the responsibility.
Second, I let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles, and found that 'let the software fix the hardware' attitude was come in for some scathing rebuttal. From engineers and pilots, of course. Here's one example. I find this particularly telling
Ultimately, Travis also bemoans what he calls "cultural laziness" within the software development community that is creeping into mission-critical systems like flight computers. "By laziness, I mean that less and less thought is being given to getting a design correct, and simple — up-front," he wrote. "What needs to happen, I think, is for liability to accrue where it is generated."
If that sounds like something you've read in these missives, you're right. Being a die-hard RM advocate, which necessarily means 'measure twice cut once', I've long railed against the mode of writing code in the debugger. That works, of a fashion, with purely software systems. Not so much in aeroplanes.
Travis is unequivocal in his assessment of the Boeing 737 MAX. "It's a faulty airframe. You've got to fix the airframe [and] you can't fix the airframe without moving the engines" back and away from their current position.
Clearly, the more time passes without a (chagrined) FAA re-cert of the Max with a software-only fix, the more likely it becomes that FAA has to say to Boeing, "get those fucking engines off the tarmac!!" And the means, at least, a complete wing re-design. Will Boeing bother? Or will they just go back to vending the 737NG? We'll just have to see.
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