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Qantas Blames Wireless For Aircraft Incidents
musther writes "An Australian airline Qantas Airbus A330-300, suffered 'a sudden change of altitude' on Tuesday. "The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin." Now it seems Qantas is seeking to blame interference from passenger electronics, and it's not the first time; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.' Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' — I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."
I really doubt the cause was really EMI from any passenger's gadgets. I mean, airport security confiscates liquids for fear someone might manage to cook up composite explosives by stirring fluids together for a few hours, all while keeping the concoction cooled and not being noticed. They're that paranoid, and I'm supposed to believe they let people on board with gear that can interfere with the steering of the plane? Please.
In the defense of so many airlines and the FAA, I will state that I would rather read a book than work on a laptop if it means reducing a very low risk.
No. This has nothing to do with "I want to use my laptop/DS/phone, so make me happy as the paying customer", and everything to do with "if an unauthorized wireless mouse can bring down a plane, we need the entire fleet of such badly defective planes grounded and fixed yesterday".
Seriously. Any system that can't deal with weak RF interference needs to hit the scrapheap. In any other industry, we'd see the customers suing - Imagine if Ford said using a bluetooth headset in their vehicles violates your warranty... They'd go bankrupt overnight. Only the fact that the aviation industry has slowly boiled the frog, making us expect horrible customer service at unpredictable (but high) prices, allows any of the BS we've put up with for the past 20 years (and the shout-and-taze squads aside, the airlines had problems long before 9/11).
Even if you're right(I don't know shit about this stuff), the issue then becomes the software.
If the plane descended so abruptly that it caused 70 injuries, then the software is to blame for not limiting ascent and descent in a more controlled manner.
When a human pilot sees they're at 30k feet and wants to be at 12k feet, they do not plunge the plane into a nose dive.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
The folks at Airbus are just dodging blame
Airbus said nothing, it's the airline who is trying to dodge blame here.
c++;
You are assuming that airport security is competent and doing something related to real security rather than performing meaningless security theater to calm the crowds.
I don't get how some people fail to see that a BIG plane cannot go from normal flight to a nose-dive as fast as would be required to injure over 70 people. Turbulence makes planes fall down like that. Not nose-dives. My source on this is a 747 pilot btw, I'd guess he'd know a thing or two...
How the hell can a *wireless mouse* affect the elevator controls of an aircraft? Are they somehow about a trillion times more susceptible to interference than the electronics in cars? Let's think logically about this for a fucking minute...
You can use a mobile phone in a car, which has damn near every function controlled by some sort of electronics (well, if it was built within the last ten years). Despite this, cars don't routinely have all sorts of weirdass control failures caused by people talking on mobile phones, which may be using an output power of up to a few hundred milliwatts. They are *sometimes* affected by massive sources of very very loud RF, like military RADAR systems - there's a spot of German autobahn known for cars having mysterious electrical failures which clear up when the car is towed a kilometer down the road. No surprises here, there's a big RADAR installation *right by the road*.
"But it's a wireless mouse, using bluetooth!" - okay, so that means it's on 2.4GHz. Fire up your laptop in the car. Weird electrical problems? Nope. Nothing. Right there you're using about 50mW of 2.4GHz RF, maybe up to 100mW depending on the card and local telecoms regulations. Get your bluetooth mouse out. Anything? Probably not - since they transmit in the order of a handful of *microwatts* of RF.
Okay, let's look at the plane - I wonder if it's got any sort of digital radio transmitter on it? Oh, look, a transponder, and that puts out somewhere between 100W and 500W depending on the type. Ah yes, and an ACARS transmitter with at least 5W, possibly as much as 25W, again depending on the type...
So, what are you saying here? Do you seriously expect me to believe that a wireless mouse operating in the microwatt range can affect the avionics of an aircraft, but *somehow* the aircraft's own very high power radio transmitters don't? There's probably more stray RF at 2.4GHz from the galley microwave.
Saying that it was caused by a wireless mouse is unquestionably bollocks.
Another reason to keep devices off is so you're concentrating on the announcements that are made, if something goes wrong and everyone needs to get out. This applies in particular to any operations on or near the ground, but not as much while at flight level.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
meaningless security theater to calm the crowds.
I don't believe it's to calm the crowds. More like intimidate the crowds.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."