Fadec reliability

Well, if BAe's (or whoever it was at the time) engineers are so good at software, why has a whole fleet of Chinooks been sitting in a hangar unable to fly? As I recall, these were bought without the manufacturers software because "our boys" were going to write their own! The result? They never even got off the ground!

In a big helicopter like a Chinook, if the engines over-speed, the first thing that happens is that the rotor blades fly off, due to the excessive centrifugal force! This is not an optimum flying configuration! So at the first sign of an engine run-away, a helicopter pilot will pull more pitch on the blades to try and absorb the power. So, no, the engines won't show any sign of over-speeding, presumably because the pilots took the correct action to prevent it!

Of course, the result of pulling on more pitch like that is a violent climb, which *could* be interpreted as a desperate attempt to clear rising ground ahead. It could equally be an attempt to stop the blades flying off due to an un-commanded power increase - something which appeared to have been a regular feature during flight tests using that software!

The fact is that we are unlikely to know for sure which it was. What we DO know is that the RAF broke its own procedures in blaming the pilots when there were plenty of other explanations available.

Of course, its very difficult for the dead to defend themselves. Perhaps that's one reason why this story refuses to lie down......

But was there a cover-up

At the time I had a friend in Aldergrove who handled the paperwork for that aircraft. I saw him the day after the accident and he alleged that the pilots had declared the aircraft unserviceable. A senior officer had then got involved and told them to take it out anyway. After it hit the side of the mountain some of the paperwork for that aircraft then went "missing".

Regardless of what caused the accident a senior officer should not have been ordering men into an aircraft they believed to be unserviceable; especially when you're flying around senior intelligence officers and officials.

In all fairness

It would seem that the inquiries have not sufficiently proved that the pilots were the sole error, and that is why the relatives of the pilots want ALL factors taken into account. FADEC is not as reliable in an emergency as full manual control, mainly due to possible conflicts with the software programming and the encountered conditions. A classic example of this was the ill-fated Airbus flyby, where the pilots flew at low speed and high-alpha, but when they demanded more power, the FADEC style software took its sweet time, delaying the spool up just long enough to cause the plane to crash into a wood.

I am not saying the pilots were completety innocent, nor that the helicopter was perfectly safe, but it would seem there are scenarios when these things conspire against each other and a crash results.

Why it still bothers people

The key to the furore over the issue is that the pilots were judged to be guilty of "gross negligence" which under the regulations required a burden of proof that there was "no doubt whatsoever." that it was something the pilots did or didn't do that caused the accident.

In this case it seems that as the Board of Inquiry couldn't contemplate any other reason for the helicopter to hit a mountain it must have been the crews fault. Lacking black boxes and with parts of the helicopter burned out there was less evidence to work on than for a civilian aircraft crash.

Not surprising that if the pilots might/might not have been to blame that the families take a strong view on them being singled out as the sole cause of the crash.

If the FADEC had issues at the time it was being used (whether uncommanded power changes or only false warning lights) then the balance of probabilities changes. If a fully functioning aircraft with a inexperienced crew crashes, you'd think the crew actions worthy of investigation but if you had an experenced crew and a faulty aircraft, you might expect the fault to lay elsewhere.

Interesting reading these Public Accounts committee reports

Who is the biggest supplier of terrorism and WMD, anyway?

"Regardless of what caused the accident a senior officer should not have been ordering men into an aircraft they believed to be unserviceable; especially when you're flying around senior intelligence officers and officials." .... Anonymous Coward Posted Monday 4th January 2010 15:27 GMT

"..the questions must be asked - why were they flying at low level given the conditions and why were all of these "crucial" passengers travelling together?" ..... Mike Hunt 1 Posted Monday 4th January 2010 15:29 GMT

Fertile spooky conspiracy material there, chaps, whenever you consider who the passengers were, and the information they might have had on the suppliers and supporters of the terrorism they were fighting/investigating.

Trial ?

"Cook and Tapper the benefit of the doubt - not that they are being tried for any criminal offence"

No, they have been tried by the Media and Politicians - far worse than any Courts Martial or civil judiciary. Hopefully these new (as in newly presented) revelations will osrt the matter out properly, once and for all.

Lewis..

Have you ever designed a computer system by chance? Do you think that they were built and put into this helicopter at the time and worked perfectly from the start ???

What the familes are complaining abaout is that without any facts to back up their claims the MOD have stained the meory of these pilots knowing that they are unable to defend themselves.

Their is no proof one way of the other to say what actually happened on that night for definate, so to avoid any possibliity of court action and compensation, the MOD blamed the pilots.

Considering that honour is something that is valued highly by people who serve this country , then I can see why the families are not going to just allow someone to state that their loved ones was responsible for the deaths of 29 people without absolute proof.

Them complaining about the circumstances of the chinook crash has nothing whatsoever to

do with the procurement policy of the MOD and to suggest sucha thing is reprehesible, you

should be ashamed of yourself if you know the meaning of the word that is !

Sudden power loss not necessarily as harmless as you suggest ...

... if it's to the tail rotor rather than the main rotor. That's basically instant spin-out isn't it? Would have thought it could be hard even to get off a mayday call in those circumstances. Does the FADEC control the tail rotor as well as the main rotor engines? A very brief google suggested it might do; it certainly does in similar systems.

Also, what exactly is "conclusively proven to be safe"? You mean like with the absolute certainty of a mathematical formula? Or just some other kind of perhaps not-actually-quite-so-conclusive "proof"? Hard to know when you just state this bald assertion without any evidence or references. Ah, but "It's a fact". Didn't Chris Morris say something like that once...?

Nonsense

The RAF board of enquiry ruled the pilots were at fault, and this can only be done if there is absolutely no chance of it being caused by something else.

We have numerous expert opinions and expert reports, evidence to show that there was a genunine issue with the FADEC software.

Whilst the cause can not be attributed definitively to the software, the fact there were very grave concerns over it means that the RAF board of enquiry should not have come to the conclusion it did.

I saw part of a report analysing the software, and good coding practise went out the window in that application. Remember, this is flight safety critical software and there are very genuine concerns over that software.

We don't know what really happened that day, and almost certainly we never will know, and the very nature of software bugs means that it's often very hard to re-create them, and they very often do not leave a trail of evidence behind for investigators to analyse. Anybody working in software knows that.

For the author to make remarks about the state of the instrumentation and control settings after the crash and then conclude nothing could have happened to the FADEC system moments earlier is incredibly foolish and naeve.

I disagree

The pilots were not on trial for a criminal offence and could not be because they were dead. However, they were posthumously blamed for the crash. Had the pilots been alive, they would have had legal representation and the finding of gross negligence would have been unlikely in the absence of any proof. It might have been better for the MOD to have acknowledged that the cause remained unknown and left it at that - but they decided to blame the pilots anyway.

The "new" documents are new in that they were not available at the RAF board of inquiry, presumably because in one of them, the CO of the Rotary Wing Test Squadron wrote that the RAF should "cease Chinook HC2 operations" until issues with the digital flight systems were resolved. If the inquiry had been aware of these documents or of the MOD's legal action at that time of the inquiry against the suppliers of FADEC, perhaps they would have arrived at different conclusions. That such information was not available to the inquiry might lead many people to suspect that there was a cover up and possibly some corruption involved.

FADEC hardly the issue

Why were two experienced pilots flying at low level in fog, rather than just flying above all known terrain? There's hardly a small arms or SAM threat in Scotland.

R

Airbus crash

The ill fated airbus flyby was caused by a couple of factors.

One the pilot left things to late and there wasn't sufficient time for the engines to spool up to deliver enough power.

And the software that received the command input from the throttle levers treated the sudden and huge demand request of throttle as being errant, a spike on the the throttle inputs which was ignored by the software - in that it shouldn't be possible for the pilot to make such a rapid and large change in throttle demand. The inputs were effectively filtered to prevent spikes.

This was a design error.

Please shut up about the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash....

...because it doesn't fit in with Page's view that expensive, imported, high tech tat is always vastly superior to anything that has gone before it.

not in our interests

"...the Superintendent of Engineering Systems said that the density of deficiencies was so high that the software was unintelligible..." -CS story

My interpretation is that the version of the software in use was prototype-code (for want of better word) in use in a life critical environment.

We can all understand wanting to put rather old stories to bed, but as this is an IT site, why is it of interest to professional engineers, Lewis, to want to bury a process failure that let greed put crappy code in places it can kill? (Whether or not it actually did.)

Intransigence

It's the "gross negligence" verdict that unambiguously lays all the blame on the pilots and says they were clearly guilty of manslaughter BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT that people find objectionable.

The fact that the result of earlier inquiries was overturned, and that senior figures in the MoD are so adamant in their refusal to admit any possibility of a doubt, makes people suspicious there's some sort of cover up and the pilots are being turned into posthumous scapegoats.

If there had been an "open" verdict, saying "the exact cause may never be known and a combination of pilot error or possible transient failures in the early control software was the most likely cause (but in any case the software has been updated since then to eliminate any potential glitches)" this issue would indeed have gone away long ago. It's only the stubbornness and intransigence of the MoD that's keeping it alive.

..at least a partial call would be likely from pilots of this sort, but none was received..

Even in a sudden power runaway, at least a partial call would be likely from pilots of this sort, but none was received.

Seen the back of a government post? "Proof of posting is not proof of delivery". Surely applicable?

Pechance the pilots were a little too busy for a chat on the wireless?

1 - 4

1 It is never too late to re-examine a decision, and if appropriate, correct it.

2 Shortly after the crash Private Eye published an item about faulty FADEC software. By memory, they reported that on a test from Boscombe Down the rotors spun wildly. The crew were able to get down and survive. Boscombe Down test aircrew then refused to fly the a/c anymore. In Northern Ireland the RAF carried on, knowing what they were doing.

3 So with low cloud, mountains everywhere and an aircraft likely to go wrong what course would you expect the crew to follow. The implication is that control was lost and the Chinook took itself to the hill.

4 There is a suspicion that this accident should be booked to the MoD, just like the Nimrod crash.

Gross negligence?

However you cut it the pilots were clearly negligent. The families may not be happy about it but I don't think that anything except a report that clears the pilots of any blame and praise their loved ones on their 'skill' will satisfy them.

If, as alleged, the pilots had doubts about the airworthiness of the helicopter then they would surely have flown a sensible flight path. Helicopters are complex pieces of machinery and they can fail for any number of reasons, which is why sensible pilots should exercise caution. This is even more important considering they were carrying a highly valued 'cargo' in secure airspace.

Instead they flew low as if they were inserting special forces into hostile airspace. Without any justification for the low flying it is easy to see why the inquiry decided the pilots were negligent.

Unless a reason for the pilots flying so low can be found then a verdict of negligence will still stand regardless of how the families of the pilots feel.

What everyone in NI "knows"

People who lived in Northern Ireland at the time (me for one) find it particularly coincidental that:

1. experienced RAF pilots flew below safety altitude under IFR

2. the aircraft held a lot (if not most) of the senior security officials in NI

3. the pilots were blamed

4. the IRA cease-fire happened the very next year with rejoicing in the streets of west Belfast

It might sound like an episode of Spooks but what everyone in Northern Ireland knows (or suspects at least) is that this aircraft was taken down by MI-5 or some other British secret service in order to facilitate an end to the troubles and the eventual union of NI with the ROI.

Crazy?

Persistence

One of the admirable things about the aviation industry is its dogged persistence in getting to the bottom of the "why" of incidents so that they are not repeated; a flick through historic air accident reports quickly shows why flight is so generally safe today. Thankfully, "moving on" is not generally a character trait of the industry, or oxygen generators might still be carried in holds without fire suppression systems. Or we might still have the odd incident where a CO2 suppression system activates in a hold on approach, and smothers the flight deck crew as there is no way for the gas to vent.

The slight waft of testosterone around that "move on", coupled with the UK military's indifferent safety record of recent years suggests that we are lucky that flight safety is in the hands of those of a more thoughtful and inquiring disposition than apparently exists within the armed forces.

If the two pilots made a mistake then all well and good. But if there is a case to answer elsewhere it should be pursued, rather than smearing the dead for the sake of political and service convenience.

While the article started out well enough, it ended up reading like an op-ed from Murdoch's arsewipe factory, and a little too lip quivering for El Reg.

Crew broke basic safety rules

We wont ever know what actually happened, but we do know the reason for the crash.

The crew broke these basic safety flying rules.

You dont fly in cloud, at low level, on instruments when there is high ground nearby.

onwhat was essentially a passenger/civilian flight.

I flew that area on a regular basis with my captain Flt Sgt. Sikierkowski on maritime reconnaisance .Even if he was told to fly at a certain height by senior ops personell, once in the air, he always flew 2000ft above the highest hills nearby.

Thats why he had 20,000hrs in his log book.

As captain of his craft, its was his responsibility to ensure the safety of his crew, aircraft and mission not the senior officer who authorised the flight. Afterall he was there, the senior officer was not.

.in the same way its everyones responsibility when driving a carto do so without causing an accident. You should never drive beyond you ability to see and stop.

If the crew of this chinook had doubts about the serviceability of this craft, why on earth didnt they fly at a height that gave them time to address any technicsl failure and send out a mayday?

when flying I was taght to fly only within the known flight envelope of the craft, then to cover unforseeable circumstances you add an extra 10% margin.

Ive known plots to break these basic rules and when events catch them out, they have no safety margin .As our flying club instructor I made the above points crystal clear to every abinitio pilot.

Pilots that dont stick to the rules pay the price aviation extracts for breaking the rules. It still upsets me when theres an accident but every pilot has to make these decisions everytime he flies.

Plotting air hours angainst accidents shows an interesting trend.

In the beginning pilots are basically scared of screwing up so they take more care.

Once they have several hundred safe? hours on type in their log book, there is a rise in accidents.

Ill leave it up to the reader to work that one out.

The captain of a craft always has to have the last word on safety, not anyone else.

Period.

What is this author's problem?

What has this author got against the AW101 and AW159 (Merlin and Wildcat)?

It's not the FADEC it's the cover up

The controversy about the Chinook crash has never been about the teething problems of FADEC or its eventual ascendancy as superior to manual engine control. It is about the perfectly normal tendency of software, especially new software, to be full of bugs that managers and accountants want to pretend are not there or not important. The RAF found pilots grossly negligent so that the culpability of those involved could be covered up. No one now asserts that the 'without doubt' test for such a finding is justifiable except interested parties. The families want the slur removed, that is all.

It is not a tech issue.