You are right. Refer to post #18 and especially to the pdf document link at the bottom of the article. Basically the engines had to be re positioned to avoid make expensive changes to the fuselage which made the airplane potentially unstable. To counteract the instability they installed software called MCAS which brought with it its own set of problems. The updated design should not even have been called a 737. Boeing did so anyway to save airlines expensive retraining for their pilots.
First, your quote from me was taken completely out of context, I believe intentionally. The screw up with the 737 MAX was almost completely with the way public relations were handled and a little with the change in the characteristics of the flight control system without proper notification to pilots. The changes with weight, balance, and thrust issues were not of great significance no matter how this was characterized by attorneys hoping to extract funds from Boeing.
Engine changes have been done on multiple aircraft lines over the years on just about every line of aircraft ever conceived from General Aviation to Airliners. They typically do not change the name of name of the plane because of it. oOur statement is so ridiculous that it casts doubt on every other statement that you have made. It seems obvious that if you actually have any aviation background at all... that it included no historical perspective. These days anyone who reads something on Wikipedia or watches a slanted news magazine report believes that they are an expert on just about everything.
Oh and I did go to the article you linked to written by George Leopold. Leopold is not an aviation expert and the “expert” he chose to quote in the article almost sounds like someone dreamed up by the Babylon Bee.
“a veteran software engineer and experienced, instrument-rated pilot who has flown aircraft simulators as large as the Boeing 757.” Really??? Those are his qualifications? He is a private pilot with an instrument rating who makes a living as a software engineer? That is as good as Leopold could come up with? And you went with this article hook line and sinker?
An amusing anecdote that probably supports your point of view more than mine. A couple years ago we had two test pilots who were trained by the military and now work for Boeing at our house for dinner. We live on an airport and have airplanes. We took them out to our hangar to look at our aircraft. Both of them said that they could not fly our airplanes. They said that they had never received any training in basic aircraft. We thought that they were joking at first but they insisted that everything that they flew had fly by wire systems with a computer between them and the actual control surfaces. Neither had ever flow a normal general avaiation airplane.
After talking with them it felt like basic airmanship as outlined in my favorite book on aviation, Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche was no longer a priority in the military or with the people running Boeing. It was shocking actually.