[SystemSafety] B737M MCAS

[Littlewood, Bev]

On 19 Mar 2019, at 13:38, Andy Ashworth <andy at the-ashworths.org<mailto:andy at the-ashworths.org>> wrote:

In summary, there was a failure in the engineering of the overall system rather than a failure within a specific component or discipline.

That sounds right to me. The following may be a rather naive observation (i’m no expert on these aeronautical matters), but I wonder whether the problem was compounded by a regulatory regime which seems to allow a new “version” of an aircraft “type” to have an easier certification passage than a new type. How different does a new version have to be, compared with its predecessor(s), before it is regarded as a new type, with all the extra certification rigour that that seems to imply? Deciding to fit larger engines, and needing to move them upwards and forwards, seems a rather fundamental design change to me, which might be expected to have correspondingly fundamental consequences.

Cheers

Bev

_______________________________________________

Bev Littlewood
Emeritus Professor of Software Engineering
Centre for Software Reliability
City, University of London
EC1V 0HB

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