• Effort0499@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    The 737 is a design from the 60s that has been milked over and over again. It was originally meant as a regional jet yet today it’s being used for midrange and sometimes even long range flights. It’s being placed in roles it was never designed for so the whole thing is kind of a Frankenstein design today. Take the engines for example. Today’s engines are much bigger than those from the 60s so they don’t really fit underneath the wings anymore. So they place them in front of the wings, changing the center of mass. That imbalance is then compensated artificially with MCAS. Needless to say, that’s not ideal but it was cheaper for Boeing so here we go.

    • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Cheaper for Boeing and the airlines. Let’s not forget that one of the main reasons the very existence of the MCAS was obfuscated was to have the pilot certification process for the plane not require simulator training specific to it.

  • HiddenLayer5OP
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    1 year ago

    If you’re wondering why the 737 Max couldn’t just have its landing gear extended to accommodate the larger engines in the original position, TL;DR the consensus seems to be that it would be too expensive and time consuming to re-engineer the wing structure and/or landing gear struts so they went with MCAS instead.

    https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71500/why-wasnt-the-737-maxs-landing-gear-lengthened-enough-to-mount-the-engines-und

    • Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Also note that if you extend the landing gears, then that also increases material requirements and would be not only heavier but also more difficult to manufacture.