I understand and know it’s just a joke
When these things fail they fail spectacularly, but the systems are designed to handle failure..
This is why the 737 Max 8 crashes were so insane. Because they had been given flight certification for something that in certain models did not have redundancy. The system relied on a single sensor and if that sensor fed bad info well you end up with people dead.
This is why it was clear from the start someone committed fraud the instant that fact was known.
Airplane tires literally go from 0 (virtually) to 200mph the instant the plane touches the ground. They have a life expectancy on the high end or 400
Landings, 150 or so on the low end. Given there are
45000 commercial flights per day in the uS. And not anywhere near that many physical aircraft it doesn’t take a genius to realize these miracles or engineering fail frequently
I agree about the other article about the missing screws as well. They were screws not bolts, they weren’t structural and yet the news couldn’t even report that fact right.
I can understand the lay person having some concern that those screws were missing, but to play it up in the media as some sort of threat to passenger safety is comical
On the tire thing, yes something failed on one or the wheel supports, it happens the stresses on these parts as you pointed out are incredible, however even if this plane had taken off it would have almost certainly landed safely at its destination…. Hell the fact the plane taxied back to the terminal should be a big clue that the failure was not to the structural underpinnings of the landing gear but something related to the mounting support parts of the wheel itself
Here is a video from a plane having such a failure happen to its underwing tires happen… as you can see it fails spectacularly, but lands completely safely.
There are of course books written on this subject. I live on an airpark with our airplanes. Many of my neighbors are airline pilots, and my brother is a high time airline captain who has flown mostly 737s during his career. The coverage on the 737 Max 8 was, as we have come to expect, distorted, and misleading as well. This was of course a hot topic for months on the airport where we live.
The coverage on this was no better than what we have seen with recent inconsequential “mishaps”. There was redundancy built into the system. MCAS itself is a redundant system intended to make the plane easier to fly. The plane can fly perfectly safely without the sensor you mentioned working properly or even present.
I heard the issue explained many times by people who were very familiar with the airplane itself, and the software “glitch” in the new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Boeing made inexplicable changes to the system and removed appropriate references from the manual. The procedure for handling a failure were different than on previous models. The changes in procedure were not disseminated properly or in a timely manner. The crashes were completely avoidable if the pilots had been trained to recognize the problem and take the appropriate action which was basically to disable MCAS when it was malfunctioning.
I was told many times that the crashes would likely not have taken place if the two planes that went down were being flown by experienced domestic pilots. Part of the problem is that modern airliners practically fly themselves. This causes complacency and allows people with almost no actual flying skills to pilot them from one destination to another.
I put up a couple of Flight Simulator threads in the past week. You can purchase the Boeing 737 MAX for both MSFS 2020, X-plane 11 and 12, and other simulators. I have not tried it myself, but you can likely simulate the failure of the sensor you referred to which is one of the things that simulators are meant to be used for.
I don't mean to contradict you... and you likely already have a good understanding of this topic. I just enjoy aviation related conversations.