Currently reading Flying Blind interesting and frightening at the same time!

Absolutely crazy the way an underfunded FAA ceded Certification off to a manufacturer with cash funding conflicts of interest to go along.

I am surprised any nation on the planet respects the US Certification process.

As opposed to all the other airtight national certification processes?

Multiple reviews on Amazon saying the author injects too many socialist views.

Did the author explore pilot actions? How about Lion Air maintenance? Or how about the day before crew that handled the aircraft just fine and landed in Jakarta (and then subsequently did not write up the aircraft properly, allowing the accident flight to commence)?

Watch “Downfall” on Netflix. Deep dive on MCAS and Boeing. Disturbing

First half was garbage. Second half delivered.

You again?

Monsooooooon

Stay on the subject , I'm on this plane now.

The documentary was just okay. There has been far too much misinformation about MCAS. Namely, why it had to exist in the first place. I cringe when I hear "to prevent a stall! because the engines are higher up." Not true. MCAS exists to keep the commonality with the NG in all regimes of flight. It was something done to keep certification with the NG the same. The MAX could have flown perfectly without MCAS, it just risked not being certified as the same type as the NG.

The MAX flies very nicely, it's a great airplane, and an improvement over the NG. The MAX9 compared to the NG is like the 321NEO to the A320. You can tell and feel the difference. They're both great airplane and a vast improvement over the NG and 320, respectively.

Now the next fiasco is going to be the MAX 10 certification. The FAA has already certified the MAX8+9 with the current annunciator panel recall like all other 737s. But now if it doesn't meet the certification deadline by the end of the year, they may force the MAX10 to have an EICAS setup. This could kill the MAX10 program. A lot of airlines have their future orders pegged to the MAX10 with the assumption that they will be similar to the MAX8 and 9 so pilots can fly all 3 variants. It honestly makes no sense to certify the MAX8/9 one way, and then force the 10 to be another way simply for a deadline. All future new airplanes (eg, a 797) should fall under the new guidelines, but the MAX 7/8/9/10 have been announced and planned for years and should be grandfathered in.

Time will tell. I still think Boeing will get it their way. The MAX10 should be certified like the MAX8/9 for commonality.

Indeed.

China is certifying the Comac C919, which is aimed at directly challenging commercial narrow body Airbus and Boeing aircraft markets, and the 737 in particular.

While it's easy to poo-poo "pirated Chinese technology", I'd encourage those who doubt China's ability to innovate an create really useful products to do their own research into how well, how cheap, and how different China has approached the 5G cell phone explosion. Really makes the US look 3rd world (which is comparatively expensive, monopolistic, slow compared to China, etc.)

But for planes, the certification will certainly be a hurdle. Long term, I'd bet against Boeing (commercial airline division, anyway), hold Airbus, and expect China to dominate this market in our lifetimes (something everyone thought Airbus could never do 30 years ago).

Not entirely true. MCAS was designed so that the MAX behaved like ALL airplanes when approaching the stall envelope. The MAX enters into/recovers slightly different than most other airplanes due to its large, forward, and high mounted engines. The difference is prolly negligible (and likely only detectable/measurable by flight simulation software as well as sh!t hot test pilots) and the MAX would have flown just fine without it by your average line swine. I agree that the location of the engines does not make it stall easier as many arm chair quarterbacks contend.

Basic airmanship is all that is needed to prevent and/or recover from a stall in the MAX under NORMAL flight conditions just like any other airplane regardless of MCAS.