> The 737 MAX fiasco shows that Boeing still hasn't caught up with what Airbus was doing in the 1980s.
The Air France 447 accident demonstrated to me that Airbus hadn't really thought things through either. Pilots entered conflicting inputs and the plane averaged them out instead of giving (good, actionable) feedback.
Side question: is fly-by-wire an obviously good idea for passenger airplanes? It's ubiquitous in e.g. fighter jets because of the inherent aerodynamic instability of those platforms, making them hard or impossible ("Hopeless diamond") to fly without computer assistance. Passenger jets have different goals and are built to have stable flight -- the plane wants to fly level. My takeaway from Air France 447 was that I want more Boeing-style (linked, mechanical) controls in passenger airplanes than I want fly-by-wire. Am I off base?
The Air France 447 accident demonstrated to me that Airbus hadn't really thought things through either. Pilots entered conflicting inputs and the plane averaged them out instead of giving (good, actionable) feedback.
Side question: is fly-by-wire an obviously good idea for passenger airplanes? It's ubiquitous in e.g. fighter jets because of the inherent aerodynamic instability of those platforms, making them hard or impossible ("Hopeless diamond") to fly without computer assistance. Passenger jets have different goals and are built to have stable flight -- the plane wants to fly level. My takeaway from Air France 447 was that I want more Boeing-style (linked, mechanical) controls in passenger airplanes than I want fly-by-wire. Am I off base?