Slashdot Mirror
Airbus A380 Under Fire
jose parinas writes "The security of the Airbus A380 jetliner is questioned by a U.S. Engineer that faces arrest and bankruptcy in Austria. A year ago, Mangan told European aviation authorities that he believed there were problems with a computer chip on the Airbus A380, the biggest and costliest commercial airliner ever built."
Flying might be dangerous ....
Even airplane engineers are going bankrupt.
This story will never get off the ground.
Take chip, look for problem, if exists fix and replace. It isn't like they would have to rebuild the whole plane.
Airbus A380 Under Fire
;)
anyone else thought this literally meant an A380 was on fire?
sheesh, they really need to name the stories better
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
"And the Vienna police, who are conducting a criminal investigation into the matter, searched the family's apartment for four hours, downloading files from Mangan's computer as his children watched." This makes it seem as it was very horrifying for the children to see files downloaded from their fathers computer. I know it still very traumatic for whenever i use my usb stick to transfer files.
I gave the bat commader a high five.
They always fix KNOWN problems with airplanes. A known major problem has never been ignored in a passenger airliner....
The story about the plane losing pressure then flying on autopilot before crashing is interesting. Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure? If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness? Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land.
We have all this technology but it's implemented by idiots.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
TTTech? Are these the people that made the PPPowerbook? No wonder shit don't work.
Reality test... am I dreaming?
TTTech has offered to drop its legal action against Mangan, court records show, and pay him three months of severance, if he retracts his statements.
This doesn't sound like much after all he's been through.
Bradley Holt
Maybe he was thinking that they Airbus was built and designed in Europe? And that he'd need to move there in order to work on it?
http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=29
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
It sure sounds like Austria has a screwed up legal system. Corporations can bring criminal charges against individuals? Here we have horror stories about SLAPP lawsuits, but this is a whole new level. If a company or powerful person doesn't like what you have to say, you go could to jail at their whim.
Let's just hope at least slashdot does keep its hands out of the propaganda war already started between Boeing (US) and Airbus Industries (EU). It's a dirty economical struggle, its about jobs and profits in the US, or jobs and profits in Europe. And because of that, plus the military aspects of aircraft research and development, both companies are, and will always be heavily funded by the respective governments.
Keep that in mind before making mindless posts about A. vs. B. . Thanks for your time.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
RTFA. He was in Austria at the time.
""The security of the Airbus A380 jetliner is questioned by a U.S. Engineer that faces arrest and bankruptcy in Austria."
Now you know this wouldn't have happened if he had posted as an AC on Slashdot.
He lived & committed the crime in Vienna, how would your US law provide any protection ?
Try reading stuff, it usually helps.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Let us assume that a problem is found. But even if it is fixed, then how can we know for sure that other problemtic parts were used? If this chip was able to get through the engineering screening process, perhaps other faulty componentry was used as well. A fault here could, in theory, make need for a complete analysis of every single part used. And in a plane this size, that's a massive amount of time and effort.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The fact that the company forged his signature on internal certifications should be enough to throw the burden of proof on the company. What worries me about this chip is "The system was executing "unpredictable" commands when it received certain data, possibly causing the pressure valves to open accidentally" So with the right junk data the system fails........at 30,000 feet, great :(
Why are they moving away from using several chips from several manufacturers to reduce the risk?
Will this be the next concorde? I suppose we'll have to wait a few years until the right (wrong?) junk data is sent to the pressure control chip and 800 people die.........
I sure hope not.
I can't stand squealers; hit that guy. -- Albert Anastasia
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
After all, it's easy to lose your daughter on one.
:(
To top it off, the flight attendants just don't care
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The story begins with a portrait that tries to paint this fellow sympathetically, and I normally would look on him sympathetically. He goes to the government and complains about problems he perceives, and he gets fired. The events transpire, and eventually a judge tells him to be quiet. By now this is out in the public - he is an American with a family in a foreign city and if he had a need to do something he did it. But then he violates the judges order and begins posting about this on a blog? It makes me think there's something more to the story, or as aviation consultant Weber says "There is something really unusual about this case in the sense that there is this hard standoff between Airbus and the individual, it doesn't make any sense to me." It doesn't make sense - him violating a judges order doesn't make sense, them filing criminal charges doesn't make sense. There seems to be something more at work here. I'll read more about this, but both parties are acting unusual to the point where I am really on neither side, whereas normally I suppose I would be on his side.
Peak Oil is really hurting the airlines right now.
The fact that air transport is heavily sensitive to fuel costs while mostly being luxury has caused it to be branded as the canary in the mineshaft for the current energy crisis.
You totally didn't read the article, did you? Sadly, your post will probably get modded up to insightful.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
The article claims that a failure in the chip could open valves that would cause rapid decompression.
There is NO WAY a valve could open up far enough to cause that kind of decompression. It would take several minutes to equalise with the outside air.
The article also claims that such depressurization would cause uncomciousness 'within seconds'.
Well, at 45,000 feet, you have 15 seconds of useful conciousness. Most craft cruise at around 38,000', where you'd have a full minute of useful conciousness... PLENTLY of time, in both cases, for you to put on supplemental oxygen masks.
There may well be problems with that chip, but the article really hypes up the fear factor. Typical of today's journalism: just repeat what others say, dont even bother making your own analysis, and you can't be sued.
If you care enough to RTFA, you will see the following line
Yet his employer ignored his concerns, he alleges, because fixing the glitches would be costly, could take up to a year and would further delay the A380's launch.(a year behind already)
Really strange reporting. For starters, they don't even get basic facts right, e.g. they report Airbus was "owned by Dutch and British companies", when in fact it is owned by EADS (80% share, French/German) + BAE (20%, British). They also keep calling it a problem between Airbus and Mangan, when the actual events (as per their own article) seem to only involve Mangan and his former employer, TTTech. Airbus doesn't seem to have any involvment in this.
To be under fire, which originates from being under artillery fire, means to be under attack.
Read the article again. This chip didn't "get through." According to the whistle blower, the company forged his signature on documents approving the chip. If true that means they knew about the problem and tried to cover it up.
I am an Australian working for a French aerospace company and there is no way I would trust a European Government to back me up in a case like this.
More than in the USA aerospace firms are seen as a branch of defense in Europe, and the courts will not look kindly on whistle blowers.
He should have gone back to the USA and started his campaign from there. He would get more backing from Boeing supporters and the US Government certainly would not act against him for criticising EADS.
I worked for 3 pharma companies. I would never openly challenge a company like this about their product. I would find a new employer first and then I would try to leak out what was going on - and I would be extra careful that my new and old employers would not find out it was me. Why volunteer yourselfs to go in front of a firing squad? - It is not important that you made the point first, give a journalist a hint, he will give you a story. If they then call you then to testify, you do it, maybe without trying to look eager.
Reporting to autorities on your own employer - even if there was a serious wrongdoing - is certain to end your industry career.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
First sentence of the article:VIENNA -- Ever since the Mangans gave up their comfortable house in Kansas City, Kan., and moved here a year ago, the family has been living in a kind of suspended animation.
Yeah.....
Monstar L
Looks like his blog is here: http://www.eaawatch.net/
I'm not positive this is his blog (it looks more like a static web page) but it does have a ton of information on the subject:
http://www.eaawatch.net/index.html
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
well, with the notorious bad slashdot grammar skills, you could intuitively assume that under=on
"Mangan told European aviation authorities that he believed there were problems with a computer chip on the Airbus A380"
"Mangan alleges that flaws in a microprocessor could cause the valves that maintain cabin pressure on the A380 to accidentally open during flight"
If there was an inclining of truth to this I doubt he would be going through this drama. Europe is VERY different to the US when it comes to corporate coverups.
I believe there is a major flaw with the fuel injection computer on ALL Ford motor vehicles which could at any time take control of your vehicle, disable the airbags and crash into the nearest telegraph pole (which it finds by GPS) at high speed.
Buy a Chev instead, to be safe!
The pilot had made a slow pass over the field, and when he tried to pull the plane up, the computer overrode his commands thinking he was trying to land, and that is why they crashed into the forest. After that, an emergency pilot override was placed in AirBus jets. The Boeing 777 can takeoff and land automatically. Hell, that airplane can do anything.
From the article: As for Mangan's allegations, they are "an unsubstantiated crusade," Airbus spokesman Clay McConnell said.
It gets my attention when they say unsubstantiated, which could be read to mean that he can not provide documents supporting his case, rather than saying it is untrue or false. It just makes me feel that they are avoiding the real issue.
They also say: "Don't you think we would look into it, and if we found it was true we would do something about it?" McConnell asked.
To that one says that risk-reward calculations made in the board room are not so black and white.
The FAA and European agencies are pretty close to each other on regulations...a good thing since we fly big commercial aircraft in each others airspace all the time. The rest of the Airbus fleet is type-certificated in the US, I can only assume they wish the same for the A380.
In this country, you're not going to put an "off the shelf" anything in a commercial aircraft unless it's gone through appropriate approval processes. You can't change the color of the fluid in the compass bowl without PMA approval.
Furthermore, if they want thier TCDS (Type Certificate Data Sheet), they will need to, among other things:
1) Fully ground test the operation of the depressurization valves
2) Ground pressurization test the aircraft
3) Test the pressurization systems in flight
[Reference: Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 25, Subpart D, Paragraphs 841 and 843]
Bypassing the approval process for a component is a serious charge. However, given that a gigantic double-decker commercial aircraft has "new and novel" written all over it, something just doesn't quite compute here.
Smells like a propaganda war, but I'll keep my eye on it.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
'The European Aviation Safety Agency, which is handling the A380's flight worthiness certification, has reviewed Mangan's allegations. "We have done the research and acted accordingly," spokesman Daniel Holtgen said. "We can't comment on it because it is a matter for Airbus."'
What else can Mangan do? He submitted his allegations to EASA, they claim they researched it and did their jobs. Another wing of the European government is prohibiting him from speaking about it in Austria. If he wants to continue his crusade (as his conscience dictates), he can move to Germany where the gag order doesn't apply, or somewhere else. He's fired from the Vienna firm, so why does he stay there? He's not even unpacked.
It sucks that a whistleblower has to cope with so much adversity. But his wife can tell him that christians accept adversity when following their conscience. His Vienna church that's helping him would probably tell him the same thing. If he can't expose a legitimate flaw from a new job in Germany, and the flaw injures or kills people, he'll have done all he can. The EASA, TTTech and Austrian court people should of course face severe recriminations for their less committed response to their liability. And maybe Austria will be forced to protect whistleblowers, if just to protect their ability to get future aerospace contracts.
--
make install -not war
Then he could have posted corporate secrets which we all could use!
It looks like the problem may not be with a chip as much as it is a problem that it is a chip. From TFA, on the Airbus there are four air pressure valves with 1 motor on each valve. A Boeing 777 has two pressure valves, each one of these valves has three redundent motors, each motor controlled by three different chips (one made by Intel, one by Motorola, one by AMD) plus a manual override, something the Airbus doesn't have.
how can we know for sure that other problemtic parts were used?
You can't. It's impossible to prove a negative.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The problem is that so many European governments are involved in the project, and so many politicians are getting "benefits" from it that it simply isn't allowed to criticise Airbus.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My first reaction was the expected "Oh my god! This consciencious guy is getting royally screwed!" and I immediately felt for his situation and could only hope to be as honorable.
But after reading the article and the other Slashdot opinions, I too think there's a lot that needs to be revealed before we can form an opinion about this.
Ultimately, we should hope that all the facts are revealed in this case and quickly. If there's a problem, it should be fixed and let this thing move on. If there's not, then I hope the true motivations are revealed as well. But I don't want to see this problem disappear under secrecy and then read about some horrible terrorist attack that was actually a system malfunction in disguise.
Maybe he remembers the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Seven people died then, when an engineer followed company orders not to oppose the launch and to keep quiet.
Maybe Mangan, the former ITTech engineer, has a conscience and takes his ethical responsibilities as an engineer seriously. If he knows of a problem and knows the company has falsified test data, it is his duty to come forward. To remain quiet would make him partially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people should a catastrophic failure occur in the Airbus pressure valves.
Also, how reliable are the systems that tell the forward landing gear to point sideways? (Remember the recent Airbus emergency landing?)
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
It doesn't seem all that silly to me..
8 2344 for more info.
> > Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure?
> No. It's a plane.
We could replace the word "know" with "detect", and lose the patronising response altogether.
> > If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness?
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could.
So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at. Clearly, something can be improved here: The fact that a plane will happily fly until it runs out of fuel, when it could probably have detected that the chances of the pilots being concious were remote at best is a part of the plane that could be designed much better.
> > Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the
> > nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land[?]
> And if it has to crash land, it can go for a nice long trip to the plane hospital, and
> maybe the plane doctor will give it a nice lollipop! Yeah, that sounds good.
Why the sarcastic answer on this one? Auto-landing is used all the time - see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=4
Now admittedly, the accident refered to in the article happened on a Leer Jet, so they are unlikely to have the same technology as a commercial liner, but I don't think the post was deserving of your somewhat harsh response.
After a bunch 'o beer and reading all the comments, is that what is happening?
I understand your quip about the Comet. However, the Bonanza holds a record as the longest-produced aircraft ever, bar none. Most aviation types I've known saw the Bonanza as an almost ideal small plane. It was one of the great successes of aviation.
Could you please explain why people *wouldn't* want their plane to be remembered like the Bonanza?
An Engineers first duty is always to the public. If there is even the slightest chance for failure in a mission critical application, where the preservation of life is involved, it's considered one's duty to inform, at all costs. Sadly "whisleblowers" even when defending the public, are often cast as evil, since others would put profits before lives.
Even though I'm a poor college student, I'd still put some money toward this guy's efforts. Would others here be willing to help monetarily? I think what he did takes guts, and I think that it's important that we have people like this to make sure we aren't killed when we're already paying out the ear for overpriced airline tickets.
I've gone up against a client (big multi-national oil company) who disagreed with me on what was required for a refinery safety system I was designing. I wanted a pretty elaborate and redundant system to take care of what I will admit was a remote contingency. However it is my job to consider remote contingencies, it was what they hired my company for. But they really balked at what I was proposing.
As much as engineers like black and white solutions, there is a lot of grey out there. In my case, I saw the deficiencies one way, they saw them another. The scenario couldn't be practically tested and the academic research on the topic was spotty and a lot of it was unpublished internal data. I ended up putting together reports with experts from two continents to convince this client that there was a problem they weren't seeing.
Standing up on something like this is a lonely place to be. Like the article, I live with the thought of what I do can kill people if I am wrong. Makes me real cautious. But people who I report to are often non-experts, and occasionally they believe things irrationally (to me anyway) and it takes a lot of convincing to get them to see the my side. And hey, I am wrong sometimes too. But to stand up to a company that is paying your paycheque and say that you will not sign off on a design because you believe there is a problem, all the while they are screaming at you that we are behind schedule and over budget, makes for a truly shitty day at work. You get all sorts of pressure to let things go "good enough". Takes a lot of backbone and confidence for a technologist to stand up to economic pressures. We tend not to care as much for the dollars as we do for safety. I admire whistleblowers for this.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
You're doing the morally right thing but you'll get the shaft every time...
Mangan said he was looking for a new job. He has contacted dozens of aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe, but none have returned his calls. "Nobody wants to touch me," he said.
It's not really shocking that nobody wants to touch you after you've potentially cost your former employer, in the same field no less, millions of dollars. It's amazing to me though that the US has some of the best protection laws when it comes to this sort of thing.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the idiot who says "It's impossible to prove a negative" has failed to understand the question.
The question was, ignoring the obvious typo, "How can we know for sure that other problematic parts weren't used?" You interpreted this as if it were a problem on a geometry test or something. (Where, incidentally, negative propositions are most certainly provable.)
In fact, the correct interpretation of the question would have been, "How can we maximize our confidence that other problematic parts weren't used?"
That's a question with many useful and constructive answers. You chose to be glib in an attempt to show off. You blew it.
I read the title as "Airbus A380 On Fire"
...and I wasted mod points on that one folks
Get your Unix fortune now!
Did you read the story?
That was the purpose of the headline.
I hope I am not being too impudent for you.
Mangan said he was looking for a new job. He has contacted dozens of aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe, but none have returned his calls. "Nobody wants to touch me," he said.
... they all seem the same... the male lead character becomes jobless and powerless as his wife leaves him to go to evil things...
But I can't remember WHICH Crichton novel
Tag lost or not installed.
Because all 4 valves are controlled by the same type of chip with no additional redundancy, all 4 valves are susceptible to the same failure simultaneously. That's if there is indeed a problem with the control chip.
And I thought there was NO WAY a forward landing gear would be controlled in such a manner as to lock itself in a sideways position. Yet it still happened.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
If the guy is wrong about his concerns, he should still be allowed to have them heard. I'd rather have 9 out of ten "squalks" amount to nothing, than suffer the consequenses of the tenth.
I'm shocked at the shortsightedness of Airbus response. Since Boeing is deploying the chips, in the American legal environment, there is no way an open process can be avoided. What in the world is the Airbus executive suite thinking? They have made a "no win" choice.
If Boeing confirms the problem, then Airbus looks like they were playing fast-and-loose with peoples lives. If Boeing, in an open process, confirms the safety of the part... Well then folks will ask why Airbus didn't open the process. And all the while Airbus looks like an ugly outfit to work for...
I just don't understand why they're playing it this way. This closed-process "deny, deny, deny" attitude destroyed Douglas Aircraft's business after the Chicago DC-10 crash. I hope the A-380 will prove safe in service, but I do wish they allowed whistle-blowers to live in peace, and addressed the claims with engineers, not lawyers.
Not necessarily. It seems like the defect in question is only found in a particular chip made by this company TTTech. It seems to me that the worst case scenario would call for a reevaluation of all TTTech parts, especially if TTTech is engaged in some kind of cover-up about its chip defects. That wouldn't necessarily bring the Airbus project to a halt, as there is no reason to suspect that parts from other manufacturers are also dangerously defective (at least no reason given in TFA).
No, those are different questions actually. Especially when it comes to safety analysis, they are VERY different questions.
-srr
GP:
> > how can we know for sure that other problemtic parts were used?
Parent:
> You can't. It's impossible to prove a negative.
Parent refers to the well-known axiom that you can't prove something doesn't exist. I agree, so mod him up. However, let me play Devil's Advocate a second. Remember the exponential solution to circuit sat? An insane SOB can just plug in all 2^^N of the circuit values and demonstrate that in fact there is no possible input combination (nobody said there was a requirement for this to happen in polynomial time). Therefore, Airbus could in theory test every possible state of every possible combination of circuits found in the aircraft, and after many decades/centuries/millennia/eons of testing they will have proven that there were in fact no more defects. Nevermind that all the original engineers and their grandchildren might be dead, it's still possible to prove that there are no defects.
Perhaps you were mislead by the "valve" terminology. According to the article the "valves" in question are each the size of a passenger window, and there are four of them on the jet. I would think depressurization would happen pretty darn fast with four valves that size opening simultaneously. There certainly wouldn't be "several minutes".
-R
For a while I read comp.risks regularly (I stopped because it was making me not just paranoid, but TOO paranoid), and recall Airbus being mentioned several times (much more often than other commercial jet makers). Put in Airbus for "with all of the words" and comp.dsp for "Return only messages from the group" at http://groups.google.com/
0 &scoring=r&hl=en&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_ugroup=c omp.risks&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&lr=&as_drrb=q& as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=1 &as_maxm=10&as_maxy=2005&safe=off
or just click here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=Airbus&num=1
Tag lost or not installed.
I read an article about this a couple of months ago... As far as I remember this guy was fired a year ago because of poor job performance. Afterwards he went public with this story.
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could. So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at.
Major changes in course or altitude require coordination with ground control to avoid other planes, weather, etc. The existing ground control system is in now way set up to automate this. The suggestion that planes that get low pressure alarms should then have the autopilot "fly them to safety" are oversimplifying the situation. THere's more too it than just modifying the autopilot software. It's like wondering where our self-driving cars are because hey, we already have cruise control, right?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
An Austrian citizen commits a crime, say - peer to peer music / software piracy in Austria - the US still prosecute and obtain warrant to extradite to the US.
If the US can do that, and they have been known todo - then I'm sure they can protect their own in another country.
This reminds me of details released by an intel engineer regarding bugs in intel's chips (indepdendent of the famous pentium FPU bug) which were to blame for most eary windows bsods. It was covered up by NDA's and intel quietly fixed the bug, but they were never held liable for this bug, which would have cost them practically their entire net worth had it been brought to light at the proper time. Corporations really are the scum of the earth, and should not have legal personhood status. Their owners and upper management should be held accountable for everything apart from finances.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Unless the component only fails under some environmental conditions (eg temperature, electromagnetic interference, power fluctuations etc). Alternatively, a simple circuit which superficially has N binary inputs and hence 2**N states might have state when it shouldn't. That inputs of 0...0 only cause a failure if there was a particular sequence of inputs immediately beforehand.
If there was serious wrongdoing, your career is already over. Serious wrongdoing is defined as people dying because your company took a shortcut. Forging the engineer's signature is one such shortcut. After that, there's no real walking away. It's your signature on the approval. If things go wrong, it's your ass anyway. The mud from dissasters flies far and wide and many innocent people are often ruined as supply chains are changed in the wake of public perception.
This is why you should never work for people you don't trust. If you get a bad feeling about anything an employer does, get out. These kinds of things never end well.
I worked for 3 pharma companies. I would never openly challenge a company like this about their product. I would find a new employer first and then I would try to leak out what was going on - and I would be extra careful that my new and old employers would not find out it was me.
In US aviation, at least, there are anonymous hotlines to report violations. Calls can trigger an inspection to verify compliance.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150095&cid =12585044
r eshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=98&mode=thread&cid=119 30483
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=142268&th
Get the book. Get your boss a copy.
Boo hoo, poor guy. At least, he is not in danger of facing the American way of dealing with some foreigners...
What part of "every possible state of every possible combination of circuits found in the aircraft" did you not understand? That covers precisely what you suggested. In short, I said "test every possible state," and I covered my ass by saying that it may take a really long time, but it's still possible. You can't shoot down my argument by citing an improbable state and saying I didn't say to test it. I did.
-GP AC
- Finding the problem is sporting.
- From there, you then have the programmer(s) test it and make sure that there are no more issues.
- Once that has passed, then you have the test group re-design a set of new tests and test them as well.
- Once there, an internal auditor goes over your work.
- From there, an Airbus auditor goes over said work.
- Then an EU FAA-equivilence auditor.
- Then an American FAA auditor.
Just that little bit of a fix, takes no less than 9 months (normally closer to 1.5 years). Delaying the A380 will cause serious issues right now. In fact, there are probably performance clauses penalties associated with this that would probably sink TTTech (hence the reason why they want to cheat).BTW, if you wish to argue with me over this (and some idiot will ), I currently do the coding of the test for the data AND APIs of an american unit that be in the cockpit of the A-380 (and other aircrafts). I have found out that getting this level C cert. has been very sporting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Auto-landing does not seem to be used all the time. In fact, judging from your own link, it's used only on rare occasions, and then in clear weather to maintain familiarity with procedures. Further, there appear to be significant limits to how much automation there is to the landings.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
- say as little as needed to avoid getting entangled in details or...
- say as little as possible so Airbus is deceived into thinking the part is "simple."
Without more documents, it's not clear to me which interpretation is closer to the truth.In this document he asserts that the OS that runs on the chip was hacked together and that the software being delivered to Airbus was not put together according to the software engineering standards Airbus requires of its sub-contractors. He also says:
Perhaps someone here knows Jeff Young and can ask him if Mangan's charge is true vis-a-vis the product delivered to Honeywell.Like why the tail broke off of an A300 just because the pilot made alternating rudder inputs. FYIO, this flight was AA587, the one that went down a few days after 911.
m m.html
http://usread.com/flight587/coverups_n_foulups/su
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I'm not expecting to get modded up for this comment!
This report is absolute crap. You aren't flying in space you don't die instantly if cabin pressure fails. It has happened before in one case a large part of the roof came off http://www.disastercity.com/flt243/ yes they landed safely and the only fatality was a stewardess that got sucked out. It happens and it's not nice or safe but you don't die everytime.
Mr Muhammar, this is your boss, please report to level 45 for a performance evaluation, thank you.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! - Antonio Gramsci.
No sh*t, sherlock. Now, do you have anything interesting to say about the A380's cabin-pressurization software? No? Thanks, and we'll call you.
An FAA member posting on /. with a nick of "StressGuy". LoL!!! How fitting... (the old "We're not happy 'til you're not happy thing and all that). Of all the FAA employees I know, only one is not so stressed that you can actually watch his hair fall out in realtime... and that's because he's finally retiring from his FSDO at the end of November so he really doesn't give a crap what happens anymore. I was this close || to taking a job with the FAA in Okie City, and am now soooooooooooooooo glad I took another govt job instead.
You can't. It's impossible to prove a negative.
Untrue.
I can prove that I am not a 20 foot nymphomaniac amazon woman.
I can prove that there are no big green martians sat on this chair with me.
I can prove *lots* of negatives.. it's as easy to prove a negative as a positive, given enough evidence - since they're essentially the same thing just phrased differently.
different AC here, so bear with me :)
you assume the circuit to be stateless. Then indeed you have 2^N states to test. The GP questioned this - if the circuit is somehow stateful, so there is a slight dependence on input history, you're stuck with an infinite set of possible histories. All you can do then is make an assumption about the chip's useful lifetime and estimate an upper cut-off for the length of the history chain. Then test all chains of at most said length.
Wait, but there is more. You need to test for various conditions under which the chips might operate. And allow for production differences between chips. And failure modes of associated non-digital components. And so on. Plenty of parameter space to test. When all is said and done, 100% certainty is in fact impossible. But that's not the point - you don't want 100%, you want a reasonably close value. After all, quite a few of the possible failure conditions would probably have killed the passengers even if the chip operated correctly.
I can prove that I am not a 20 foot nymphomaniac amazon woman.
No, you can't. You could be a 20-foot nymphomaniac Amazon in disguise. Go ahead, prove that you're not!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You cannot prevent all failures. But safety critical systems need redundant and if possible simple designs to prevent catastrophic failures.
If you actually bother to read your own link, you'll notice three things:
/.'ers not reading the article and going for the hype instead of the facts.
1.Airbus sent out notice about engine performance before the crash to the Airline, Air France and
2.Air France did not inform the pilots
3.The article blames Airbus for the failure of Air France.
4.It says nothing about the A320 doing loops.
Why you got modded to 5 is mainly a testament to
Mangan's blog has significant details. It makes quite a bit of sense if this guy, has more integrity than your average person. He's a super smart guy apparently, and he's probably right, firing him was probably not a good idea. Who wouldn't be miffed, and want to restore their good name? For the Austrian company, I'm betting they don't have the time to improve the design, or fix it properly.
I've read the various articles in the LA Times and WSJ, and his blog, and my take is he is an engineer, and he's not going to let politics and bureaucrats cover this flawed design. Any whistleblower faces this - it's what sets them apart from the average person.
The articles are very interesting, he was testing the system and found flaws not only in the functionality but the system design (not redundant). Seems there's politics and big money involved.
I sat in on an ethics class, directed towards engineers, at Stanford once, forgot the name of the class, but the professor posed the question - if you, as an engineer on a major project (whether it be designing a new drug or a spaceship), and discovered an issue, what would you do? Now perhaps the dishonest person, rushing to finish the project and look good, would move on. The average person would write an e-mail perhaps, and then if nothing was done, perhaps at most quit their job. And if you're fired? Anyway, interesting class.
Slashdot returns 54 hits. Guess this place is safe to read.
I can't beleive peoples first response is to really attack the person making the claim, and Slashdot for it's pro-American bias. And people say Americans are jingoist with their heads in the sand. Dude, this is simple, test out the claim, openly. That's what would happen in the USA. But this isn't happening in the USA, but in Europe. And the response is 'It will all be handled properly, now nevermind. And you talking out of like, shutup. And if anyone doubts any of this, well, there pro Boeing/USA." Jebus. Call me an noncomprehending american cowboy, but when my family could be flying on the plan, give me the American response anyday. And you people saying decompression in a plan isn't really that bad, WTF? In a plan, at high altitude, not just decompressing is really one of it's more important jobs. What if the plan dropped out of the sky? Would you be saying "Well yeah, that's not great, but the plane won't hit the ground for 2 minutes, so it's not THAT bad." Come on now guys, you can't be serious.
Just watch, they used TTTech chip based testing equipment to test TTTech chip based equipment. *GREEN LIGHT*
Le Sigh..
Why arrogant and flameful comment like that was modded as insightful?
Well, Cthefuture may not be an expert in avionics and real-time systems. Then may be you - Fastball - are? Then just explain why this is not feasible instead of stupid bashing.
my sstream of consciousness
Umm, that's the whole point. The point about "COTS" is that the testing is less rigorous. Further, Mangan _was_ testing the system, and found flaws, but this component was not fixed, and Mangan was fired and told to shut up. He is also dubious about the redundancy of the system. Finally, apparently you didn't read the article as your propaganda claim is weak, since this component would also be used in other aircraft such as Boeing jets. Think of the German company Bosch, which makes many components for many car companies, such as diesel injectors. Further, his blog does not hold up Boeing as a shining example in any way.
Further interesting reading on the certification process from his blog is below, you leave out some critical details:
The dumbass thinks that US "fair use" crap will apply to stolen documents.
Right, but are the other systems using the same component? In Mangan's blog, as one of his concerns was redundancy. There are other systems, but they all use the exact same component, and apparently while Airbus requires dissimilar redundancy for safety critical systems, due to negligence it was not required in this case.
Actually, it is possible to prove a negative, just not universal negatives.
I think you misread the link slightly -- it's done once in a while in good weather conditions to keep up with procedure in case it ever needs to be used out of necessity in *bad* weather conditions. That's how I read it, anyway.
Certainly there is also criticism of the way Airbus have designed the cabin-pressure valves redundancy, but this can be tested and fixed.
One would think. Maybe you should RTFB
It sure sounds like Austria has a screwed up legal system.
Screwed up as it is I don't think the Austrian system is any worse than the US, German, French. British one.... The basic truth is that every body is equal under the law in a Democracy and everybody can get justice. All you have to do is put up the money for a N-year long legal battle and we all know who is more likely to win that one don't we? Ciitizen John Q. Public or Corporation X? My money is on the corporation. The end result in cases like this usually is that however wrong they may be the corporations always win. They do it by dragging things out in court until they have bankrupted you broken up your marrage and genarally ruined yoru life causing you to give up. One is just left hoping that Boeing and Airbus both have the sense to test these chips exhaustively before one of their aircraft makes them regret their lethargy when several hundred people die. Of course it usually never sinks in until to late that the PR damage done by one of their new superliners crashing will cost them more than what they are saving by ignoring the problem but one can always hope for a miracle, like... say... an aerospace industry CEO growing a consience? I know it's a slim chance but I have't quite given up on the human race yet.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
..Lord, Where Are You When Bad Things Happen?"
A: Suffer pigs!!!
then try this toof &num=10&q=boeing+group%3Acomp.risks&safe=off&qt_s= Search
...
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=of
Airbus: 171
Boeing: 196
Nasa: 393
So I'm not going to get a Nasa flight
If true that means they knew about the problem and tried to cover it up
From the first intro to business class as an undergrad to MBA classes, students are reminded constantly of the Ford Pinto fiasco and how to save a few bucks on a rupture proof gas tank bladder the company was sued for many times over what it would have cost to fix the things. This is a question of a $500 vs $50 part in a plane that costs a couple hundred million. I would be quite amazed that any company in the modern litigious world would forge a signature to get a part as critical to safety as this one passed when knowing that the part was sketchy. If an A380 ever crashes due to this problem after this guy was so harshly treated for suggesting there might be a problem then not only will the company involved be sued into oblivion but also the entire management team for all of their family's personal assets for the next millenia.
...lets RTFA and carefully note that Boeing is buying TTTech chips as well as Airbus:
Indeed, Boeing Co. has ordered TTTech's chips for the flight control system for its upcoming mid-size 787 Dreamliner. Boeing executives said they were unaware of any problems with TTTech's chips, but said further questions should be addressed by TTTech.
The boys at Boeing don't sound any more eager to take this seriously than Airbus so he would't get any support from that quarter would he? The US Govt. is another matter of course, being that it is teeming with Neocons just itching to shoot the Airbus consortium down in flames.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
[i]I'd rather have 9 out of ten "squalks" amount to nothing, than suffer the consequenses of the tenth.[/i] Yes, but if 9 boys called wolf, would you listen to the tenth?
It's like wondering where our self-driving cars are because hey, we already have cruise control, right?
Ask the lawyers. Technology to handle driving on highways has been around for years. After the grand challenge is won by someone, there's really no reason most of the automatic driving problem can't be solved. Well, except for the lawyers, and they aren't going anywhere.
Same goes for an emergency altitude change in an autopilot. All you'd have to certify is that it wouldn't trigger accidentally. In the remainder of cases, no matter how badly coded, it'd be much more likely to save lives, since the alternative is already certain death. The problem lies in the following: If the emergency system didn't work, the airplane designers would be sued, while if the autopilot flies straight until it runs out of fuel, the airplane designers can simply say it "did exactly what it was supposed to do." In other words, we've created a culture of conservatism and covering our asses, at the expense of actual technical progress and "doing the right thing".
It seems preferable to letting the plane drop out of the sky to me. Different planes have different limitations. According to my link, some planes need the pilot to "join" them to the radio beams - others can be automated from take-off to landing. I'm not sure how accurate that claim is, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possibe. Also, pilots are encouraged to practice in clear weather so they can perform them in bad weather. Autolanding is technically able to land in zero visability.
Airbus and Boeing both have a lot of motivation not to produce a plane that falls out of the sky. And before I get to fly on it, the FAA will test it and it will probably have a few thousand commercial flights under its belt already. If it makes it through all that, it's safe enough for me.
Overall, I stopped worrying about whether people who design safety critical systems know what they were doing--it became clear to me long ago that they don't and that if I was going to worry about that, I'd have to become a hermit. But as long as the stuff they produce works well enough on average, it doesn't matter whether it works for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons.
As for this case, my impression of these allegations is that TTTech may have cut some corners they shouldn't have cut, and that Manangan may have reacted to that more strongly than he should have. But, again, if the end product doesn't fall out of the sky too frequently, who cares?
Yes and no. The pilot-in-command is allowed to take any action necessary to ensure the safe outcome of the flight, including disregarding instructions from ATC, or failing to obtain a clearance when other tasks take priority.
If nobody on board is capable of interpreting and acknowledging a low cabin-pressure alarm and overriding the auto-descent... then the autopilot's implicit declaration of an emergency is surely valid.
If a descent to 10,000 feet *might* cause a loss of separation, and failure to do so *will* result in a fuel-starvation crash, then dude, WTF not?
Rabbi Dov Zakheim recently ?
... remember after echelon was outed that the europeans sued the US for $4,000,000,000 for using it to snaffle details of the Airbus tenders and thus enable Boeing to undercut them.
Come to that
> > If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness?
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could.
So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at. Clearly, something can be improved here: The fact that a plane will happily fly until it runs out of fuel, when it could probably have detected that the chances of the pilots being concious were remote at best is a part of the plane that could be designed much better.
I would suggest that the autopilot expect some kind of feedback from a pilot every so often. For example, if a polit does not respond to a request to push a button every five minutes, then perhaps radio an emergancy signal and start to move to a lower altitude.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh and this is for airbus, me I will wait at least a year or three before I will even get any where near one of those things, let some other poor smucks be the test flight passengers (airbus A380 carrying more crash test dummies per flight than any other plane in the world ;-0).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The article states the A-380 has four valves each slightly larger than a cabin window, ceiling of 43,000 ft.
So if you blew out four or five cabin windows simultaneously at ~40,000 ft (with air leaving the cabin at nearly the speed of sound) you'd be OK for upwards of a minute?
The numbers I get put useful conscousness at 15 sec at 40000, 20 sec at 35000. Sounds like "seconds" to me.
Enough to put on your O2 mask if your the actor in a demo video on a sound stage, but with 800 surprised and panicky people on board... Not sure I want to bet on that.
They need to demo that this is fixed to the satisfaction of the sharpest engineer they can find and a font of common sense.
"Don't you think we would do the right thing?" doesn't cut it. See "Challenger". Hell, I and a posse of passengers had to fight very hard to stop a Major Airline from flying our asses from Hartford to Cleveland (no jokes please) while staying under 9000 ft - turns out someone set the O2 generators going when they parked the plane the night before and they'd run out. Since cabins are pressurized to 9000 ft anyway, as long as they flew under that, no need for O2, problem solved!
Remember - if there is more than one way to do something, and one of those ways will result in catastrophic failure, someone will try to do it that way.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Anyone who has any experience designing 'mission critical' systems will know that redundancy and resilience are the only way to get your 9's. Systems have to be redundant at every level. Without consideration for anything else, it unnerves me to know that there is ONE system controlling ONE valve. Logic can be perfect, but machines that execute a logical system and the elements which the logical system actions WILL fail at some point.
I don't care what anyone says. This guy is right.
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." -- Albert Einstein
1) Never have your chips designed where they are manufactured
2) Don't hire a company where you have to stutter to say their name.
This is a question of a $500 vs $50 part in a plane that costs a couple hundred million. I would be quite amazed that any company in the modern litigious world would forge a signature to get a part as critical to safety as this one passed when knowing that the part was sketchy.
Airbus didn't forge his signature, that would be the company who makes the $50 part.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
you can prove absolute negatives in situations such as mathematics and chemistry and fairly often physics too :P
That atom is NOT chlorine
That variable in the given soloution is NOT equal to 3
XML - A clever joke would be here if
It's impossible to prove a negative.
Oh? I'd like to see you prove this claim.
When doing a chip design, sometimes you put in some "don't care" conditions where output conditions can be of any logic level. This is done to help simplify the logic of the chips and to reduce complexity of the overall design. The problem comes when those "don't care" conditions become something that you need to worry about. That is just one possible issue that he is dealing with here. Other issues can include numeric overflow, where the number values seem to take on a "random value", even though in normal operation the values are just fine. I've had all of these problems come up with designs I've done, and they were non-critical applications.
Apparently he was doing his job very well, and testing all kinds of conditions that he presumed would be faced by the equipment and found an error condition that would cause some problems.
I faced a similar kind of issue when I was using a vendor component that had a serious design flaw. As I was the senior engineer, I had to bring the bad news to the CEO, who was a saleman by traning and experience, not an engineer. He didn't take the news very well, particularly because we were trying to get the product out the door under a short time frame and had already committed to purchasing a large lot of the component. I ended up losing my job over the issue, but I didn't want to put my name on a product that was a piece of crap either.
BTW, that project was for a law-enforcement application that would process evidence. While not as important as aircraft parts or medical equipment, I wouldn't want shoddy stuff being used against me in court when I got pulled over by an overworked police officer, especially if I was the one who designed it in the first place.
we're not talking about Airbus forging someones signature so they don't have to spend a few extra bucks on a plane worth millions... we're talking about a manufacturer who forged someones signature so they wouldn't lose out on sales of their $50 part.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
That would be Disclosure, but without the wiufe part. There was sexual harassment and a big dot com bomb on it, though.
I believe there was a movie about this, but wasnt too successful.
This does not look like a Boeing PR move. This looks like a honest-to-goodness engineer sticking to his ethics.
...
...
From the article:
"Unlike U.S. laws that shield whistle-blowers from corporate retaliation, Austrian laws offer no such protection. Last year an Austrian judge imposed an unusual gag order on Mangan, seeking to stop him from talking about the case.
Mangan posted details about the case anyway in his own Internet blog. The Austrian court fined him $185,000 for violating the injunction.
To help pay living expenses and legal fees, Mangan sold his house in Kansas. With only about $300 left in his bank account, Mangan missed a Sept. 8 deadline to pay his $185,000 fine and faces up to a year in jail. Next month he's likely to be called before a judge on his criminal case.
The family expected to be evicted this month from their apartment, but their church in Vienna took up a collection to pay their rent.
TTTech has offered to drop its legal action against Mangan, court records show, and pay him three months of severance, if he retracts his statements. But Mangan has refused.
Mangan said he was looking for a new job. He has contacted dozens of aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe, but none have returned his calls. "Nobody wants to touch me," he said."
You can't. It's impossible to prove a negative.
Why do people think this? It's idiotic. When you prove a positive, you also disprove it's opposite. If I prove I am a man, I also prove I am not a woman.
I think what people mean is that they cannot prove an existentially qualified negative (i.e. there does not exist), or a universal positive (i.e. everything in the universe is blue).
But anyway, proving and disproving those types of statements is why we have second-order logic.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
He's an American (as am I, just for the record) so people might think that he's a Boeing spy. If this guy can spread even a little doubt about the safety of the A380's safety, it could end up making hundreds of millions of dollars for Boeing. There is a lot of espionage in the Aerospace industry.
This isn't just a disagreement, someone is lying here, and with geopolitical stakes what they are, who knows...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm not denying that TTTech might be cheating, but there are plenty of reasons why this guy might make up the story too. Boeing could be paying this guy millions to talk shit about this chip...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I like it when companies come along and try to re-engineer commercial components for military/aerospace use just to save a few bucks and really be cheap about it....thats total bullshit. look at any major chip manufacturer like intel, motorola, they will not sell you a commercial chip that you will turn around and use it for a "real" application (in mil/space/aerospace etc.) Thats why chips used in thoes fields cost $500 each and not $20 like in the chips used in your PC, they have to be able to function in robust enviroments and are extensively tested and engineered to function as such. For example, take any commercial "jelly-bean" cmos or cheap microprocessor and blast it with freeze spray on the bench, chances are, your project will burp and/or shut down, you can't have that happening in a tank or airplane. As far as putting one motor on each valve, that's insane, the desing used by boeing (3 motors) makes more sense and by the look of it, no manual control and these chips (from the description of the article), are probably using a bus (can bus?), like in your typical car..and if one fails, they all fail??? (what, they all listen to the bus and copy each others command (fautly or otherwise?)...now that is total bullshit, there is a reason space systems are expensive and redundant, this type of enviroment is not excuse to eliminate seperate wiring to each valve and network all the valves to what looks like one bus....if thats true, thats really insane, sonebody should slap airbus management really hard, you don't pull a microsoft when its airplane systems involved, those type of people should not be allowed to design even calulator chips, let alone airplane safety systems!
He wasn't bashing the implementers, he was bashing the people who decide what to implement. For the record he said: We have all this technology but it's implemented by idiots. How is "implemented by idiots" not implying, er, directly stating that the implementors are idiots.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've read TFA, and had a good look at this guy's website (http://www.eaawatch.net/).
There might be something to his story, but I personally do not buy it. Simply because his website is of the "ultradense and incoherent ramblings of someone who forgot to take his medication" type.
I mean, sure, if he is legit he has a LOT of information to convey to convince you that he is right, but the structure and the writing style is an almost perfect replica of a conspircay theory site. If his blog were posted on somethingawful.com as "awful site of the day" the only difference would be that there are no photos of aliens or faces on mars on his pages, but the writing, style and layout is right up there with the best of them.
Completely unreadable, with LOTS of facts that no-one outside the companies in question can check. IF he had a valid complaint and IF he's such a good engineer he should be capable of presenting his gripes in a fashion that is comprehensible to his fellow engineers.
I mean, if he's getting his ass sued off anyway at this point, why not really say what's it all about on a technical level? All we get to hear about is that his former employer has a somewhat weaselly relationship with Airbus, and was not always 100% frank with them w/r to the testing of that chip.
Riight, like this never happens anywhere else. Not that it should - but these allegations, taken by themselves, especially *without* a smoking gun of "they were hiding THIS bug" (as opposed "the chip allegedly behaved funny sometimes"), do not carry as much weight as he thinks.
I might be completely wrong about this, but - based on his website - my instincts say that this guy is a crank.
Just my 0.2E-32 EUR
As my father's one of the lead software engineers designing those, and they're quad-redundant within each box, and I think he mentioned something about 2 or 3 in this specific one. Might be wrong, it's been awhile since I've talked to him about it though.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
s/and the fault of the system/and not the fault of the system/
...from what I hear from my father, who is a software engineer currently working on the A380's nav box (also backwards compatible with current planes, the "old interface")
This type of stuff undergoes so much testing - a single change can mean millions more in testing and development costs, not even taking into account the months or years spent.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Dear airplane users
We have to inform you that tha A380 is flawed. Believe US: Fly A380 and die!
Signed
Douglas McBoeing
Donnell Lockheed
er, extradition cuts both ways
I have sympathy for a guy thats trying to save lives, his whistleblowing was the right thing to do.
However, when starting down the road with such obvious dilemas, perhaps it is wise for one to investigate the possible consequences of one's actions before running headlong into the abyss.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Listen, nobody is playing. The process is ongoing. Judge told ALL sides to shut up during it. (you see, here curts try to avoid turning cases into "PR fest", "faith based" shows). He violated this (call it offense of the judge if you want). This won't have effect on the outcome of the case, although fines are already there... I really like our free-of-whistle-blowers culture here, thank you very much (and we do have some taste how it works - there are of course populists to be found everywhere)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Well that's what the company says. So the real facht is that he worked there for 6 months and that this chip development started years before 2004. Because they needed these chips for the ground tests. And before that these chips have to be tested. So Mangan was too much involved in this.
Also for me that looks like: He got that job, he scewed it up and was laid off in his probationary period.
(1) Any modern airliner can fly automatically if the airports are suitably equipped. Nothing special about the 777.
(2) The computer didn't "think" he was trying to land - it was a pilot error, the pilot pulled up too late and the reason why everybody always talks about the computer overriding his commands is that the computer didn't let the plane rotate as hard as he pulled up since that would've caused it to stall and the computer is designed to ensure that the plane always stays within its flight envelope (i.e. doesn't stall) and is thus always under control. So the plane was doomed the very moment when the pilot didn't pull up when he should have but the difference is that if the computer hadn't overridden his commands it would've fallen straight down instead of hitting the trees.
You seem to be a Boeing fan so I doubt that you'll even try to accept the Airbus design philosophy, which is that instead of having the pilot tell the aircraft exactly what to do, the pilot tells the aircraft "do this as you see fit, since you're better at it than I am". The aforementioned accident did of course happen but an Airbus has a better chance of surviving such a situation where an aircraft has to pull up as fast as it possibly can without stalling since in a Boeing the pilot has to manually throttle up and control the aircraft based on what the instruments tell him whilst a pilot in an Airbus simply pulls up as much as possible and then the computer takes care of the rest (applies throttle and ensures the highest possible angle of attack without stalling). If you wish to critisize Airbus for something, pick something sane instead - such as some of their "user interface" designs. About ten years ago a French Airbus suffered a controlled flight into terrain accident since the pilot entered the descent rate as a descent angle instead, which - technically - of course was a pilot error but I'd rather blame the design since the descent angle or rate is entered with the same display and knob with only a small led next to it indicating which you're entering. Personally, I consider the Airbus philosophy better since pilots are still human beings and computers can be programmed to perform specific tasks according to given data better than any human being (such as a rapid ascent which requires careful monitoring of several flight instruments) and computers never get tired, nervous or distracted. I doubt that we'll ever see a crash caused by a computer error since an Airbus is equipped with several independently developed systems (different hardware and software but exactly the same specifications, of course) and if one system gets a different result than the others or finishes late it is restarted once and shut down if it fails again (the A380 has 32 such systems IIRC).
Before RTFPing (I get in via the RSS headlines), I thought that hopefully it meant someone didn't like A380, rather than somebody actualy fired upon an A380 :-) never thought "on fire" though...
VKh
What the heck...!? That would be -95 degrees Celcius - is the rest of the article as badly researched as this fact? Since when does it have -140 degrees at 30,000 feet? I actually never saw more then -80!
Scarebus just had a front gear failure a few days back in LA.
This message is from Joe Mangan
www.eaawatch.net
www.joseph.mangan.name
www.joseph.mangan.com
The Commercial Aircraft Industry economic business model is seriously flawed, and is actively engaged in transferring financial risk from Corporations to threats to the lives of the passengers and crew without their informed consent.
This issue is not about AIRBUS vs BOEING, this is AIRBUS and Boeing, and FAA, and EASA, and the Aircraft system suppliers and their sub suppliers. This is about all of the elements of the system being under tremendous pressure to be overly aggressive in the use of untested, unproven, low cost technology containing high uncertainty. The use of technology of high uncertainty always results in projects taking far longer to complete and costing far more than originally planned. This is project risk, and risk is nearly always significantly underestimated in project planning of modern Aerospace Programs. In essence we have the worlds biggest game of ?Russian Roulette?. With Boeing and Airbus gambling that the other will
Pull the trigger on the chamber containing the live round, thus ending the game. I believe that what we are about to see if the combatants do not ?throttle back? is the ?story of the 3 Japanese fighting fish?, where the smart fish (China, India, Japan) allows the other 2 fish to fight to the death, leaving the survivor too weak to defend against the attach of the stronger smarter fish who wins unopposed.
I feel a great sympathy and compassion for those who failed the morality test, challenged with facing the agonizing decision over career and wealth, vs the cost to human lives of their choice. My Christian conscience would not allow me to look the other way, realizing that for my own comfort and security, I would have to knowingly rationalize my own selfish interest, and thereby place at risk the lives of innocent Men, Women, and Children.
I have waited an entire year (October 2004) in a tireless pursuit to work with AIRBUS, Nord Micro, TTTech, EASA, and FAA to correct these issues in private. These organizations refused to take any action. I was left with no other avenue than to pursue the issue in the public domain one year later. I had simply exhausted every opportunity available to me. I even visited the CEO of Nord Micro in his booth at the Paris Airshow, spending 40 minutes with him and his engineers in an attempt to convince them to act in the interest of public safety. Numerous failed attempts in good faith with TTTech are documented on my website. In each and every case, TTTech violated agreed to terms, and demanded in each case a retraction of my official statements to EASA and FAA, which has always been understood to be non-negotiable.
Are these people who failed the moral challenge evil? No, they must decide what is more important to them, the lives of people vs profit, comfort, and security for themselves. The laws currently favor those who choose profit over safety. Protections and safeguards, even in the United States are insufficient to motivate a whistleblower to put themselves and their families in ?harms way?. One only need to look at the Corporate Crime Spree of WORLDCOM, ENRON, TYCO, ADELPHIA, HEALTHSOUTH and others.
Conscience can only motivate a whistleblower to act first in the interest of others.
When confronted by Executive Management with data showing the program is significantly over schedule and over budget, direct pressure is applied to find a way to ?get back on schedule?. Just as with the WORLDCOM case of Ebbers, all that must be said, is that ?we have to make our numbers?, and th
> Actually, it is possible to prove a negative, just not universal negatives.
"There is no woman sexually attracted to the average Slashdot poster."
Boy, I'll bet your face is red!
More modern systems can actually "fly" the aircraft but only according to a strict program. So a modern airliner can be setup to follow a set of nav points, altering height etc as needed BUT it is still extremely simple stuff. If it "detects" that it is dropping below the desired altitude it will increase power (easiest and smoothest way for an airliner to climb). But it doesn't KNOW that it is dropping below height let alone the reason.
The autopilot no more knows about the internal pressure then it knows about what its REAL altitude is. It is not a human being, it can't reason.
For an autopilot to do what you suggest would require a leap in AI that is impossible at the moment. Do we really want aircraft to decide on their own where they are going to fly?
There has been one spectacular failure when an airbus decided it was landing while the pilot wanted to do a touch and go. Result crash and a dead crew.
That is even assuming the autopilot in question was even a computer. It could have been one of the old systems that do nothing except keep the aircraft on a steady course.
You may have heard about auto-pilots that can land an aircraft. This is true HOWEVER these autopilots just follow a fairly simple routine by making sure they are in the middle of two beams that present the a proper glide angle. Follow that and push the right buttons at the right time and you will land. But there is no intelligence in it. If the guide beams are out of alignment the autopilot will happily try to land on top of the airport terminal. There may be some advanced models now that correlate its expected altitude according to the guide beams with its own readings but basically there is a bloody good reason aircraft come with seats for TWO pilots.
Don't be to sure about having all this technology. Just imagine the scenario you describe. I am flying at 3km and the autopilot detects a massive presure drop. So it drops altitude automaticlly and plows straight into a 2km high mountain.
Then again, the solution is obvious, simply require crew to wear pressure masks constantly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I read about this week ago, you know, from credible news sources. It's a non issue, the systems have been tested and certified, it's all about this one guy being an ass about being fired for being incompetent and now wanting to give them trouble.
Try to prove the this single atom is not chlorine.
Come up with some ideas and you will find problems everywhere. Quantum mechanics kill any attempt in getting a 100% answer.
You can't even locate the atom exactly, so how do you want to find out what type of atom it is exactly? You will even have a hard time proving that a chlorine atom is not as big as hour house. The probability will be very low, less than 1 in a trillion but it will never reach zero and so your prove will never work.
But for an 100% US funded company incorporated in panama, would you call it a "panamean" company ? Well I would certainly not. So the comment of the Grand parent poster applies.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
this "troll" contains pure facts and links to factual articles. moderator needs a fucking brain and rudimentary literacy skills.
loser mods.
I thought the US government was pretending that Shi'ites are the terrorist threat.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Well, Leer Jet sounds a little dirty, a Lear Jet might be what you're looking for. Now, I'm definitely not an expert on instrumentation options on the Bombardier range, but your average, entry level Lear Jet, afaik, runs to around $50M. The equipment on them is, as they say, state of the art.
I have visions of pilots on a longhaul run, say Sydney - LAX (15.5 hours) getting one of those little birds on a stand, with the liquid in the bulb, that Homer Simpson uses to do his job, pressing a Dead Man Switch every few minutes.
Moreover, they would cut the cost of aviation chips to about $20 apiece, versus $500 for previous designs.
It's SUBNORMAL. The Russian engineers did use m6502 chips (to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502) and did successful their systems. ...) (to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Ltd).
Actually, the modern good chips are ARM7TDMI (Thumb), ARM1156 (Thumb-2) & VFP (for geographical FloatPoint's operations as positions, velocities,
The TTTech company had hidden contacts with the Boeing's companies and their friends in the other land.
The British government did spy the A380 mission and did contact & evil contract with the TTTech to reduce their prices before it was the definitive candidate chipmaker of the buyer France government because it was false-positive cheap!!!.
The British government's plan is clear: "to help the Boeing of their american friends and to ruin the A380 of their european enemies".
The afraid employee, sincerely yours.
If I gather things correctly, I think your attitude of ignoring work contract non disclosure clauses and court protocols is where your problem lies. If there really is a problem with the chip, and you made your bosses aware of this and they failed to take any action, but eventually fired you after you went to the media about the problem, it indicates a basic failure on your part to understand the contractual side of your job. If you had refused to put your signature on those problem components and resigned, you would have had much less of a problem legally in speaking about it. You would also not have been responsible in the way the Concorde chief engineer was. As it was it seems you ignored company contracts and secrecy clauses, irrespective of whether they are right or wrong, and spoke to main contractors, the FAA, Airbus, EASA and the media without any permission to do so from your employer. And after a court had issued a gagging order on you, you ignored even that.
I don't condone company secrecy clauses, but you alone are not going to change that. I think. Your inability to grasp your legal situation seems really strange though and strikes me as being less than intelligent. To recap, you could have refused to sign the components and resigned, or gotten fired, after which you would have been within your rights to sue for wrongful termination and to file a criminal case against the company for ignoring safety consequences in their product. Why on earth were you too dumb to speak to a lawyer when you saw problems with the company process?
I forgot to add above: If you are so sure that the company forged your signature on documents, you would be well within your rights to sue them for forgery and file criminal charges against them in Austria. It would give you a lot more clout in your barganing position than you now have. Again, why haven't you done this? Why are you too stupid, excuse me for saying this, for simply not speaking to a good competent lawyer about your charges. If all your claims are true, your chiefs worries are about you being held responsible for a faulty product. You could sue for this too.
I just don't understand why you instead choose to act like the stereotypical American with a big mouth and scream it all to the media.
ARM7TDMI (Thumb):
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM7TDMI.html
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM7TDMIS.html
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM720T.html
ARM1156T2(F)-S (Thumb-II):m ily.html
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/families/ARM11Fa
What is Thumb?:
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/archi-thumb.html
Signed by the World's Saint.
Oh yeah, you configured a RAID array and now you are the expert in safety-critical engineering. Is there any field of knowledge you can't absract your IT skills onto from the safety of the machine room?
I know Stefan Poledna, quoted in the article. I know the TTTech people: they were competitors of a company I set up. These people are excellent engineers. The management is composed of engineers. If there is one company in the embedded safety critical systems industry I would trust to do a proper job, it is TTTech.
Furthermore, the TTTech "chip" is a communications chip only. It doesn't do anything at the application level. It is designed to provide fault tolerant multi-channel redundant communication. In any case, a hazard analysis of the actual control unit connected to the TTTech chip should include the case where the chip fails (however remote a chance that it would).
Finally, the whole move towards "off the shelf" components is one designed to increase safety. A device that has been examined and used in the millions (e.g. in automotive) is one that is well tested in the field. Compared to a paper-perfect-but-never-flown design I'd stake my life on the field tested one any day.
K.
I wanted to make two points originally:
1) With analogue things like temperature, the parameter space is not only infinite, it is not even countable.
2) With things like history state, you get an infinite parameter space. Hence your tests will never finish.
Therefore, it is impossible to test every single possible state, though in the real world, you can get close enough.
I think you mean Prey. But his wife doesn't leave him, she's just away a lot working on mentioned evil things while he stays at home looking after the kids having trouble to get a job again.
And then there was Airframe, I believe, a Crichton novel about safety and politics in the aviation manufacturing industry. A really enlightening read, even factoring in for creative licence and dramatisation.
http://69.57.136.18/moviestorage2/af320.mpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-10 versus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-10_Extender
It's not logical that, in civilian systems they did cause many deaths, and in military systems they did cause few deaths.
Why the civilian Bush's helipcopter is military and not civilian?
Burocracy!.
The test you saw was the emergency deployment when all hydraulic power has been lost and not normal deployment.
In the case of a complete hydraulics failure the crew can actuate a manual lever which unlocks the undercarrage and deploys it using only gravity to do so. This is what you saw.
Normally, the doors and the undercarrage itself are driven fully by the hydraulic system and the doors are never touched by the wheels or anything else.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
In 1971 the three person crew of Salyut-1 space station died aboard the Soyuz-11 space return capsule when an air outlet valve errenously opened to space vacuum early during the reentry. The capsule parachuted to a landing OK but the people inside were fully brain-dead. The capsule was subsequently redesigned so all the crew now fly in spacesuits. There have been no more Soyuz fatalities with this double-layered protection.
On Fire !!!!
It's another anomaly of engineering.
Signed by The World's Saint.
"Airbus A380 Under Fire"
If you will try landing one at Baghdad airport what do you expect
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
- Water in brake cylinder back end froze up. Cylinder lacked weep hole.
- Brake electronics had two identical systems running in parallel.
- If you pressed one of the brake system buttons for more than 10 msec, but less than 20 msec, one computer might see the keypress, the other might not. Never tested for.
- Brake system uber-boss hardware checks for differences between two computers.
- If it finds a difference, it turns off the secondary computer, WITHOUT SNOOPING AROUND to see if in fact it was the secondary computer that was getting off-track.
- Said turning off is not signaled to the pilots in any obvious way.
- Even if the pilot notices, by flipping to a obscure status-page, that the secondary braking system has been downed, pressing the RESET button doesnt actually reset much of anything.
- Airbus encourages pilots to use auto-braking mode, which supposedly gives a steady 0.3G's of decelleartion.
- If auto-braking doesnt seem to give 0.3G's, some TILT lights go on, but the braking system doesnt try using the suspect bad system, even after the other system is now known to be bad.
I could go on, but I think you see the basic drift here. Not a clue among the designers, testers, or managers.Similar totally foobared design blew up the $400M Ariane rocket. Similarly foobared design for the Airbus flight control computer: lessee-- Pilot is pulling very hard on the stick, should we do what he says or drill a big hole in the ground? Hmmmmmm.....
Full report URL's I can find if anybody is interested.
Wow, a single lonely hero sacrificing everything in trying to save the lives of hundreds of passangers while all other involved parties, including his former company, the Airbus consortium, the Austrian government, the Austrian courts, several experts and probably a lot of others just do everything to cover this up to kill their future customers as soon as possible. He is obviously the only person on the planet who is right here and all others are either wrong or even part of the huge conspiracy.
http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af 296.shtml
I would be quite amazed that any company in the modern litigious world would forge a signature to get a part as critical to safety as this one passed when knowing that the part was sketchy.
General Electric (GE Healthcare) does this all the time with medical devices. They've forged my signature on engineering approvals several times. And told me there's nothing I can do about it. Apparently, the FDA agrees with them. Of course, now they're busy trying to sniff out who reported them.
I don't know about the other GE divisions, but I'm suspicious of them by association.
I'm not arguing that it isn't done or can't be done. You said that it happens "all the time" when the link indicates that it's uncommon at best, and since a significant fraction of the airliners out there do not have significant auto-landing capabilities, I simply pointed out that the article suggests that it is, overall, a fairly rare procedure.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Too true, though the bookstore I was working for at the time didnt carry that one. We had a good polity in which the bookstore was our own personal 5-day library. (waldenbooks btw)
Will you stop and LISTEN for just 2 seconds- you are not hearing what I'm saying.
1) IF the autopilot is engaged.
2) AND the cabin pressure drops.
3) AND the pilot does not turn off the autopilot.
4) AND the pilot does not respond to a prompt that the autopilot thinks it needs to descend.
4) THEN the autopilot will descend to an altitude that humans can breath.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There's two number 4s ;-)
It's a nice idea, and if anyone is going to do it first I'd bet on Airbus - they seem to like removing manual overrides and such on their planes from the pilot.
The other thing is: if there's a failed MFD I hope the pilots know the prompt is going to show in a different place and that they'll spot it in all the confusion, then there's the failure mode where all the MFDs are unavailable and they're flying the plane from the tiny battery powered backup instruments, etc.
So it was the tree's fault! Or whoever planted them!! :)
"....around 30,000 feet...at that altitude...temperatures of 140 degrees below freezing would kill passengers within minutes." The above, from the article, doesn't sound right. 140 degrees below freezing (assuming fahrenheit) equals a temperature of -108F(-77C), which might be a valid temperature for the tropopause over the tropics, at 50,000ft. But, at 30,000ft, it's more likely that the temperature would be about -50F(-45C), or about 80 degrees below freezing.
The only reason to put that many people (555) on a plane is money. More people on a plane = more profit.
I'm not an engineer but the way I'll bet the situation is, is that there's a really quite an incredibly small chance of the those values malfunctioning, and even a smaller chance of anyone dying because a value malfunction. So even if the chip is poorly engineered, fixing it just doesn't make sense from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint.
The problem is this:
The whole plane has been designed this way. I wonder how many safety oversights have been made in the design of this plane?
There are thousands of interconnected systems on the plane.
Dozens if not hundreds of these planes will be flying.
They will each fly thousands of hours.
Sure maybe there's a 1/10000000 chance per hour of that particular system malfunctioning, but start adding up the numbers.
Similarly the DC10 was rushed to production and numerous bone-headed design decisions, ie, lack of reasonable redundancy in control systems and cargo door problems, cause the deaths of hundreds of people and ultimately the grounding of the whole fleet until the problems were addressed.
We all know the a320 has it's problems, ie, bizarre computer control problems and (obviously) landing gear problems.
I guess we'll have to wait until one of these planes comes down, horrifically killing 600 people before the problems are addressed.
Even if the FDR *was* tampered with to remove 3s to make the pilot look more culpable, it doesn't matter - he had already made lots of mistakes.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Actually there's other ways. You could RTFA. I've simplified that by excerting below. Or you could use common sense. Whistleblowing is CLM - career limiting move. You don't do it to make a little cash on the side. This guy is now basically an untouchable. He's in this out of integrity honesty, and now after being fired, to clear his good name. Something few and far between these days.
My understanding is that blowing the whistle on something like this in the US is only a crime if it can be shown the allegations were knowingly false. Perhaps Austria should implement a similar standard.
Oh, how *wonderful*. The investigation is ongoing! That just fills us with utter confidence, Mr. McClellan. Now were _sure_ something will be done. Oh, except you don't know what you're talking about at all do ya? The only investigation that's "on going" is whether Mangan will be arrested or not, you twit. The component is a done deal, especially if the rest of the world is as complacent and ignorant as the slashdot kiddie twits.
You comment(s) annoyed me. So, if any of this sounds harsh, take this as a good reason of why you, Sir, should stop taking part in aviation related discussions both on the Internet and in person.
"There has been one spectacular failure when an airbus decided it was landing while the pilot wanted to do a touch and go. Result crash and a dead crew."
I'm so sorry; you have that a bit (rather a lot) backwards. The pilot was trying to land, he pushed the TOGA button (Take Off/Go Around) and the autopilot did EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS TOLD TO DO. Pilot error != Autopilot error. Instead of letting the damn thing do what it was told to do, he insisted on trying to override the autopilot by pushing the controls forward to descent which, in turn, made the aircraft trim and increase power to climb. After he let go, surprise, the aircraft stalled. ALL he had to do was either:
A) Tell tower, "XXXX is going missed." or "XXXX is going around."; Christ, he didn't even have to say anything at all, they would have saw what he was doing and would have asked anyways.
B) Disconnect the autopilot.
or
C) Let the autopilot do its thing then do A.
Instead, the pilot KILLED 264 people. That's disgusting--all because two people that were under qualified in both the reasoning department and flying department were put in the right and left hand seats with people's lives behind them.
"That is even assuming the autopilot in question was even a computer. It could have been one of the old systems that do nothing except keep the aircraft on a steady course."
Uhh. I'll pretend like I didn't read that.
"You may have heard about auto-pilots that can land an aircraft. This is true HOWEVER these autopilots just follow a fairly simple routine by making sure they are in the middle of two beams that present the a proper glide angle."
That's the worst comment I have ever read--congratulations. An autopilot system that can auto land isn't some crappy $5,000 autopilot you bought out of the back of some aviation magazine. Come on, get a clue. Advanced autopilots are coupled with flight director and FMS which can do a whole world of things--much, much more than "just flying a straight line".
"If the guide beams are out of alignment the autopilot will happily try to land on top of the airport terminal."
Oh, bullshit. Please direct me to or cite ONE incident/accident report from the NTSB that cites any sort of ILS "alignment" as the cause of an accident/death/injury/property damage/etc. Oh, you can't find one? That's funny.
"I am flying at 3km and the autopilot detects a massive presure [sic] drop. So it drops altitude automatically and plows straight into a 2km high mountain."
Never heard of EGPWS/GPWS, have you? Oh, you haven't? That's funny also. Sure, EGPWS/GPWS aren't accurate to the point where they're going to pinpoint the tops of mountains to one foot, but they're most certainly good enough to deviate from a course and allow known obstacle clearance.
People like you give aviation a bad name. Thanks a lot! I ask this of you in the very near future: please stop talking to anyone, either on the Internet or in person, about anything aviation related.
So it was the tree's fault! Or whoever planted them!! :)
Yeah yeah, blame everything on God.
A baby is born with some horrible defect and dies two days later and it's "God's will". Bush invades Iraq and it's "God told me to do it".
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
> we're not talking about Airbus forging
$50 part? Did you even read the article? We're talking about an airliner that's already a year late, designed with redundancy stripped out from a crucial system (cabin pressurization controllers), and bugs in the controllers, possibly leading to a expensive and timeconsuming recertification process, perhaps even a redesign of pressurization system.
Just the time delays could cost Airbus billions as foreign airlines and governments sign deals for the new generation aircraft from Airbus and Boeing.
Your sarcasm has no point.
Do the search from your corrupt boss's computer. The dumbass probably uses windoze, so it should not be too hard to get in there to do it. Good luck!
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
...in more ways than one, as someone may have already pointed this out but I don't have time to read 5 pages of comments to find out.
From TFA:
"Airbus says that the A380 has achieved redundancy by installing the extra cabin-pressure valves, which provide a safety cushion in case a valve fails."
Wait. What? How does that protect in the slightest if one or more valves fails in the WIDE-EFFING-OPEN position? That's the defendant's whole point, that the valves fail by opening when they're not supposed to. You can't exactly close the other ones more than fully closed to compensate.. Granted I know nothing about ingress vs egress rates, and whether one wide-open valve can be compensated with intake, but from the article, it sounds likely that such a failure would be a failure of all the valves at once, not just one.
All hail the power of the almighty _(insert monetary unit of choice)_. Clearly worth more than thousands of human lives.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
Just a coincidence Made-for-TV Movie 'Mayday'
was shown last night? Part of the plotline was a corporation and government trying to put the kabosh on why a plane was going down. (The review said it was like a serious remake of "Airplane!" Yes the plot cause of the incident is dissimilar, but corporate and government the motives are not.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
ill give you that but i still win on the math !
XML - A clever joke would be here if
It is good to see that Joe Mangan is actually reading this list of posts. It means that we have first-hand information, and not just a journalist's "take" on the situation. I would like however to make a few points that I haven't noticed in the posts. First: European Law is not American Law - or not yet anyway. Second: European Law and European Policemen have no discernible sense of humour. Third: Whistle-blowing in Europe is something that is done during trade-union demonstrations and only there, and only with whistles. Forth: While (see point 2) no sense of humour is discernible in European Policemen, it is possible to discern which European police-force is the most lacking in sense of humour - the prize certainly goes to the Swiss (especially if you are non-Swiss in Switzerland), but the Austrians run them a very, very close second. And lastly, and directly for Mr. Mangan, as the thing stands the Austrian law-enforcement are not playing on the same field as you : you are worried about air-safety while they are intent upon showing you that they are serious people who will not tolerate any lack of respect (as they see things). They are in their country ; the game that is getting played is their game and not yours. They are going to leave you in shreds - and without one single solitary thought for air-safety. You have only one thing that you can do - go straight to the American Embassy and solicit their assistance to do just one thing ; get you and your family out of Austria with all you can salvage. God is good, and the Baptist Church is good - but even He cannot persuade the Austrian Law-Enforcement to stop playing at being serious law enforcers and start thinking about air-safety. "When in Rome, you have GOTTA do as the Romans do" or else ....
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
...Auto-landing is used all the time...
Let's hope it doesn't land too softly
--
Problem - Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.
Solution - Autoland not installed on this aircraft.
What?
You really piss me off with this post. It's your own bloody website. That means it's your own opinion versus everyone else's, or do you think that the fact that that shit is up on a website makes it somehow solid evidence? You are starting to make me think that you deserve the court gag order because you simply refuse to ignore any legal rules.
OK, how tall are you really?
Mr. Mangan, would you notice please that I have written a post to this discussion entitled "White Knight complexes and European Law". In this post I made four points and the forth point was directed to you in particular. I was remiss in not specifically drawing your attention to what I had written, and I am repairing my omission now. You may want to read the post and if you do, remembering that you are living in highly stressful circumstances at the moment, I'd ask you to bear in mind that it was written in all kindness and politeness. You may want to consider that I write from experience - I've lived here in Europe for the past 30 years. So, before it's too late (and when it gets to be too late it'll be sudden, drastic, and 'way too late), take action to take care of yourself and your family. They will get to be much less enthusiastic in their actions if you are in America. Good luck to you.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Jow Mangan seems to have a new website that has gone online under the name of www.joe-mangan.com A modern day hero, in my opnion. Feel bad for his three children and would be proud to have a wife like that, which stands behind him during this. Lost all of his material stuff!! We need to treat our heroes with respect and take care of the few that we have left in this rotten world. Too many people have forgotten that money is just a tool and not a God. Sometimes I wish I had the courage that this Joe Mangan seems to readily display. I suggest that we all send him at least an email wishing him well, for he is at a lonely point and doesn't even realize that 200some of us are talking about him. I say write to contact@joe-mangan.com and let him know that we are thankful, that people like him even concern themselves with our safety.