Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge The final report into the 2008 Qantas flight QF72, which unexpectedly dived twice during a routine flight, has blamed a combination of software and hardware errors for the incident. On 7 October 2008, the Australian-owned A330-303 aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet when the autopilot disengaged and the aircraft rose, before …
"Software (and hardware) bug(s) fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge"
Double plunge actually. Software bug. Citation? See headline.
User Interface (a.k.a. human factors) means things like: The trim wheels *not moving* as the computer slowly and silently adjusts the trim to compensate for things slowly and silently going all pear shape. The pilots will be made aware at the last second when the trim reaches the stops. Boeing aircraft make the trim wheels move so that the pilots at least have a chance of noticing the slowly spinning trim wheels.
User Interface means things like aborting the landing when the pilot pulls back on the stick. Early Airbus would continue to land (in the ocean) even with the pilot pulling for all he's worth.
There's about a dozen or more major differences in the design concepts.
These are very bad design decisions. Some have been fixed over the years, others not.
Typically I don't use a headline from an IT website as a thorough Air Incident Investigation, that's just me though, you use it for evidence.
Considering most of the 'user interface' as you call it is governed by CS25 and whatever the FAA equivalent is then it's not really down to Airbus or Boeing how things work or even what colour the displays are.
Incidentally, User Interface does not mean Human Factors, that's something completely different in aviation. Have you tried google?
For arguments sake, assuming all these claims of Airbus design issues from you are true, why does the American FAA certify Airbus craft as airworthy?
According to you, there is enough evidence to not allow Airbus craft into American airspace. "Fundamental design flaws" All those Boeing lobbyists would be having a field day with all this "evidence". Boeing, as an American company. can bankroll an American election campaign as well, Airbus can't.
You also are not explaining why Boeing has the same overall safety (and failure) record. Either your evidence is false, or Boeing have other "fundamental design flaws", that at the end of the day make the failure probability the same.
Making "Boeing/Airbus" irrelevant in the big picture.
This issue was clearly not related to any possible human interaction design philosphy difference between airbus and Boeing.
There was a fault in an ADIRU which generated erroneous data periodically. The FCPC was designed to use data from 3 ADIRUs to ensure it was using valid data but the specific pattern of erroneous data was not detected resulting in erroneous data being used. The failure mode of the ADIRU was not identified by the manufacturer of the ADIRU in its failure/hazard analysis and is still not understood.
If there is any blame to airbus it is in the algorithms used to handle and check the 3 sets of ADIRU data. This is not described but it sounds like there is an assumption that faulty ADIRU data will be persistently faulty. This is nothing to do with human interaction design.
"While, on average, the computer control is safer, you won't find the average human pilot aiming the plane at the ground and thinking its ok."
The autopilot thought the plane had somehow gone into a stall and therefore pointed the nose at the ground to try to gain airspeed to get out of the stall. This is the normal way to get out of a stall. The other way is to crash, CF what happened to AF447 where the one thing they didn't do was point the nose at the bloody ground and pick up some airspeed, thereby stalling into the sea. Arguably if they'd switched the autopilot back on (on AF447) the crash wouldn't have happened.
To repeat the point made elsewhere - there have been far more incidences of people flying planes into the ground than of autopilots doing it.
As for the 737 comment - they upped the landing speed to 150 kts and that seemed to do the trick. It's one of the reasons 737 landings tend to be pretty hard and fast.
Think about Air France 447 and its mysterious and still-unexplained disaster. Perhaps another "bug" that had a less-fortunate outcome.
System failures of all sorts are inevitable, especially as systems grow more complex and lend themselves to failure cascades induced by unanticipated chaotic interactions.
Of course, if you were bent on destruction, you might find even ways of exploiting those bugs.
My newest thriller, Die By Wire (diebywire.com) revolves around a man who buys a reliability testing company that services airliner computer systems. His aim: even if you can't eliminate all the bugs (like the Aussie A330's) you can exploit bugs that you do detect.
I'm a book author now, but have been the CTO of a tech start-up, worked with computer systems for 40 years and know a couple of things about systems failure. One of the reasons I wrote the book was to bring wider attention to the issues of fly-by-wire failures.
The pilots responded to their instrumentation. But the computer generated instrumentation was at odds from how the aircraft was actually behaving ... and given the rough weather, trusting instruments would not ordinarily be a bad thing. They responded appropriately in relation to instrumentation, but not appropriately for reality. That's a different matter than simple pilot error.
I'm not sure it's that simple. Yes, the flight data recorder indicated the pilot at the wheel climbed the aircraft into a second stall that ultimately doomed the aircraft. But if you look at the context of the final minutes, it is quite possible that the instrumentation was in conflict with itself, giving erroneous information that was impossible to resolve correctly.
This is one of the best narratives available an contains some solid expert context: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
Yes, it is startlingly obvious that pilot error can be disastrous. And that is usually what airlines and manufacturers would always like the public to think. That quickly absolves them from blame.
But I do not think that this can be dismissed as simple pilot error.
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