"The mismatch certainly was in the report, it mentioned both the 20-25kt speed variation and also a comment that the airspeed, altitude and flight director pitch bar values deviated with the left side values lower than the right side values. No cautions about it were mentioned so either left out or the MAX doesn't give a caution with that much deviation for some reason."
So another master caution going off we are up to 4 now.
Those symptoms are usually present in a bird strike. Maybe its a bird strike took out one sides pitot system and AoA vane.
The flight directors are usually split until we are doing an approach and we are locked onto a ILS. Then they link and do the error checking.
Vo... ok its the speed that you can use the full deflection of the controls without damaging the airframe. Takes me back 16 years to when was a FI. But its not the max operating speed. Its usually only defined for light aircraft. And is usually linked to the rudder and tail strength. There are 3 cats Normal, Utility and aerobatic in light single engine aircraft.
Cat A commercial aircraft have lockouts to prevent full usage of the controls in certain configurations eg normally we have 9 deg of rudder when the aircraft is clean. When we select flaps then it goes up to 14 deg. But we can use the full range of controls up to Vmo which is max operating speed when clean. With flaps out then we are limited by the flap speed which takes into account the increase in rudder power.
The max operating speed Vmo may be a structural limit. Or it could be a limit due to transonic flow over part of the aircraft or it could be due to some certifcation limit of testing eg the windscreens for bird strikes.
Are the icao ones for these cat A machines.
The aircraft is protected from the pilots mostly allowing full control usage. What you can't do though is cycle the control inputs. ie use full left rudder then go full right and then back again. This was the reason why the tail fell off the airbus just after 9/11. There are slightly different historical philosophys between US pilot practise in realtion to stalling and upset recovery. US used to teach not more than 100ft height loss in stalling, Europe we try an minimise it but lowering the AoA is more important and preventing secondary stall. Upset they used to teach to use the rudder to pick a wing up using secondary effects.
Basically the dash crash got NASA and the FAA looking at it and they should be teaching the eruopean method now for stalling.
And the airbus tail falling off also got them to change things to the european way of correcting upset using the primary control inputs.
But there are loads of old time instructors and pilots that still use the old US methods and teach them. European pilots that get trained across in the US have to have them punched out of them. If those tendencys are spotted in the sim its a fail.
