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0 pointsTheodores7y ago0 comments

The bottom of the engines are a mere 40cm of so above the ground when the plane is on the runway. Hence the tight fit and need to move the engines forward so they would fit. Then the auto-fix-the-stall software isn't something the pilots are told about.

They didn't come up with a common sense solution, doing so would have costed many billions for a new airframe with longer legs for the landing gear. This is how I understand the problem, coming from a design compromise and organisational groupthink.

Clearly this is my armchair speculation however I suspect there will be lessons to be learned from this that run along the lines of the 'Vasa' rather than the 'Comet'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

The Vasa story crops up on HN from time to time, it was a top heavy Swedish ship that sank after launch in light winds many centuries ago. The spec had changed with more gun decks added and groupthink drove the 'pride of the fleet' project forward. The launch date happened and it sunk.

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bryondowd7y ago

Your link seems to indicate that the spec hadn't changed, that was just speculation that was disproved on inspecting the wreckage, and it turns out the design was basically bad in the first place, due to very tight safety margins and the poor understanding of engineering a ship at the time.

mschuster917y ago

> The bottom of the engines are a mere 40cm of so above the ground when the plane is on the runway

Jeez. How are pilots supposed to land that thing in heavy wind scenarios? One wind blow at the wrong moment and it will make ground contact.

avar7y ago

When airplanes land their longitudinal axis isn't parallel to the ground. If it is they've got bigger problems than engine clearance.

The 737 MAX engine clearance from the ground isn't very unusual. E.g. the A320neo is below 56 cm[1].

1. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/9350/is-the-gro...

outworlder7y ago

Well, if it is that bad, you should have made a decision to divert to the alternate long ago. Plus, it's not any wind that would cause this.

The older versions of this aircraft have the same ground clearance and have had for decades.

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