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Failed Avionics a Possible Cause of BA038 Crash
Muhammar writes "As you may have heard by now, both engines of the Boeing 777 aircraft flight BA038 suddenly cut off without warning at very low altitude and low speed during autopilot-assisted landing at Heathrow. A prompt reaction of the pilots prevented the stall and saved all lives aboard. The crash landing short of the runway tore off the landing gear on impact, and the fuselage plowed a long, deep gouge in the grass. With the investigation ongoing, the available information points to an electronic control problem as the most likely cause of the sudden engine power loss."
What I've read is that the pilots observed a relatively gradual loss of power symmetrically on both engines. This tells me that I can rule out engine problems with FADEC and fuel. It all points to the auto-throttle. Autopilot tells where it wants the plane to go and autothrottle calculates how much throttle is needed. It then commands both engines FADECs via the bus system which is doubly redundant. What I'm thinking is that auto-throttle is supposed to be backed up, bypassed by a manual direct control to the engine FADECs from the cockpit throttle control?
Any B777 avionics mechanics around - I only know military jets...
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A little bit of perspective here.
First, there were MANY credible witnesses that swore they saw a missile shoot into the sky before the explosion. Of course, it turned out to be the different trajectories of the airplane pieces, but that was only figured out after a detailed analysis of radar records.
Second, prior to Flight 800 the terrorist explanation WAS more likely - I don't think a modern airliner had EVER exploded by itself before that, but there had been a few that did it with outside help.
Finally, the intelligence and police agencies were careful NOT to peg it on terrorists as the only theory. It was the news media that ran with the "Arabs and Stingers and Bombs Oh My" stories incessantly. Yeah, the government floated the idea - because it was a definite possibility. What are they going to say? "We have some eyewitness acounts of what looks like a missile launch, but we have definitely ruled out terrorist involvement."
As an aside, where are the Flight 800 "Truthers"? Why isn't anyone blathering about the conspiracy to hide the REAL reason Flight 800 blew up?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Actually, they have given up creating multiple implementations of the code. There were only ever two implementations, scattered across several computers. However, when developing the systems for this very aircraft type, Boeing decided that they now have tools which can verify precisely that the software matches the specification, and where they actually need to put the effort in is in checking that the specification makes sense. Rather than wasting effort in having two teams implement implement the specification, and verify that using automated tools, you use the extra effort to look closely at the specification.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
That said, my paranoia meter says this could have been caused by some nut near the airfield with a HERF Gun.
May the Maths Be with you!
or a very near lower powered source such as a cell phone inside the farady cage
While already moderated funny, I'll just clarify that this is a myth. A more likely explanation for the cellphone ban on planes is due to the networks not being able to handle several hundred clients moving at 800km/h in view of tenths maybe hundreds of base stations.
it's in my head
It's certainly not without precedent. No case of air/fuel mixture explosion was found in 747's until TWA 800 in 1996, and 1,396 of those were built since the 747 started flying commercially in 1970.