Originally Posted by
Big E 757
I heard today, just from a fellow crew member, who knows as much or less than the rest of us, that the 737Max never passed the wind tunnel testing. Some how, the aircraft, by virtue of the big ass engines, was not aerodynamic enough to pass the test?? I don’t even know how it works or what the wind tunnel test proves, or is, or if it’s a certification requirement.
There is no "wind tunnel test" to pass during certification. You certify the airplane by flying it, not by flying a scale model in a wind tunnel.
The wind tunnel is a tool used to validate designs and gather preliminary data before building and flying the real thing.