Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
New information (to me anyway) and I didn't see it mentioned here yet. Apparently the MCAS was put into place to begin with in order to deal with a potential "imbalance" situation created by attaching new, bigger engines to an old airframe design.<p>"The new 737, named as the 737 MAX, would require -as usually- bigger engines, to offer an increased fuel efficiency, competitive to the one of the A320neo. And again, there was no room for them. So, the solution was to extend the front landing gear by eight inches and at the same time to move the LEAP-1B engines even more forward and higher up (image 3). This last design modification was later found to create an upward pitching moment during flight, which could bring the aircraft closer to stall under specific operating conditions. To tackle this problem, Boeing introduced the so-called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The MACS simply trims the stabilizer nose down, to counterbalance the moment created by the new engine positions."<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-737-max-old-design-modern-complications-asteris-apostolidis-phd" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-737-max-old-design-moder...</a>