Software - first resort of a scoundrel...
For Boeing to even mention the MCAS software shows that they are casting around for an excuse that they hope will, well, fly. I believe that to the CEO and those at board level, none of whom I imagine has written a line of code in their lives, this is almost akin to saying "God did it". Software is mysterious and powerful and can be called on to fix the unfixable. And we mere mortals cannot be expected to understand it. Except, as these tragedies have shown, software is not magic.
Building a plane that can't be allowed to be flown by aircrew certified for it without the intervention of a piece of software should never have been considered. On their own admission, Boeing's MCAS was developed because just opening the throttles on a 737-MAX would cause it to pitch up, stall and fall out of the sky. And to prevent this Boeing relied on an automated system relying on a single instrument with a known tendency to produce erroneous outputs. This is fail dangerous in the worst way, since turning MCAS off still left the pilots with a plane that was easy to crash.
This is such a flawed concept that even someone like me, whose most risky code might have wasted some chemicals in a batch process, finds it incredible. The degree of corporate stupidity now revealed is really worrying, and not just in respect of Boeing but in the FAA and the whole government. And these people are contemplating lunar exploration and voyages to Mars...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
