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by bangboombang 2325 days ago
Yes, after the 737-MAX I absolutely want more computers, AI, blockchain, cloud, microservices, HTTP/3 and big data in the planes I'm boarding.
5 comments

The problem with the 737-MAX was not that it used a computer. It was that the 737 series is generally not designed to be fly-by-wire and it was rammed in there to keep previous flight characteristics and just generally downplay the design ramifications of putting a much more massive engine below the wings that tilts the center of gravity considerably and changes flight characteristics.

Airbus is doing fine with fly-by-wire. They do so because they start with it at the design stage and don't haphazardly change major aerodynamic characteristics without going back to the drawing board and thinking through all the ramifications.

There is much more to say what went wrong and it's fairly well documented in public sources and little of it was because computers (though there is something to be said about the code quality culture at Boeing, but that's a different topic).

Interestingly though, main (sole?) purpose of MCAS was to reduce the cost of (re-)training human pilots, so the logic has kind of come full circle.
Airbus has been fully fly-by-wire for a long time now. It's one of the main differences with Boeing.
Those technologies are already used heavily by the airline industry which is extemely dependant on software and it probably will continue to build on that dependency.
Redundancy of flight controls with Kubernetes. If a flight control goes offline, Kubernetes auto-heals.