Our July/August article "Learning from the MAX" gave readers lots to think about. Herbert "Skip" Hickey,AIAA senior member emeritus, said that although the article was interesting, the pilots' lack of surprise in the depicted scenario did not "properly emulate the performance" of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crews. "Since the cause of the loss of control was known beforehand, the proper commands from the captain to the first officer [in the article] were given precisely and unequivocally and did not follow procedures as given in the flight manual to wit, the throttles were moved to idle. This was not in the flight manual. This eased the recovery procedure by reducing the nose up pitching moment and decreasing speed. As pointed out in the article, speed is the enemy because the increase in elevator hinge moments could result in excessive control forces making recovery from a nose low attitude difficult. So the simulation was interesting, it showed recovery could possibly have been accomplished provided the pilots did not follow handbook procedures.
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