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Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet
DesScorp writes "Investigators working with the wreckage of Air France flight 447 believe the aircraft suffered cascading system failures with the on-board computers, eliminating the automation the aircraft needed to stay aloft. 'Relying on backup instruments, the Air France pilots apparently struggled to restart flight-management computers even as their plane may have begun breaking up from excessive speed,' reports the Wall Street Journal. Computer malfunctions may not be an isolated incident on the Airbus A330, as the NTSB is now investigating two other flights 'in which airspeed and altitude indications in the cockpits of Airbus A330 aircraft may have malfunctioned.'"
...Don't trust Windows with your life.
I dunno, the NTSB usually drags their feet before stating anything. They usually don't make statements about suspicion of what may have happened without specific evidence. This seems like an unusual announcement from them, not their usual style. I wonder if they are compelled to state a truth that they fell won't be properly addressed otherwise. After all, Airbus is built in Europe not the US.
A bug in software! This is like the article about how RMS has the same opinion he had a month ago.
You're not in the hands of a skilled pilot, you're in the hands of a programmer.
I assume these kinds of modern planes can't even fly without a computer anymore.
Tag BSOD. :/
"The fancier they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." -Scotty
Why can't they use a battery-operated GPS-based measure of airspeed as a backup and as a check against the pitot tube-based measurements? Surely it would not be very accurate, but I would think it could be accurate enough for the pilots to know the plane was going too fast and not too slow.
That works fine when everything's okay, when not, they click yes to "do you want to format your hard drive" because they always click yes on those little window with buttons thingies. Then they call IT who has to get the backups. Oh wait, that's where flying a commercial airliner is unlike a PEBKAC.
Airlines aren't interested in the best pilots money can buy. They want the cheapest pilots that are allowed to fly.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I this is true, I bet the software testers feel bad.
It would be ironic if the flight computers contributed to the accident, given the focus on designing them to prevent humans from contributing to accidents. Interesting video showing an A320 "refusing" to be crashed: At about 3 minutes, the software prevents roll beyond 67 degrees. At about 4:30, an attempt is made to stall the aircraft, at which time the software overrides the throttle settings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO5l6_d6yck [youtube.com]
Second, the US announcement of the two computer failures, neither of which caused an accident, presumably has nothing at all to do with Boeing's recent embarrassment over continuing delays and cancellations to the Dreamliner, and a desire to damage Airbus?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
So the trains in DC collided because even while the human operator tried applying the breaks the computer overrode the engineer and kept the train moving at a good speed. And now the investigators of the air france flight are saying computer failures on that flight caused the plane to stay at a high-inoperable speed, despite the pilot's best effort to slow down? Does it sound to anyone else like the computer revolution from Terminator, the Matrix, nearly every other future sci-fi movie is taking place? We never should have let them start beating us in chess now the computers are getting all uppity.
...the way aerospace (life critical and specialized or specific field oriented) software is created, it is highly bug free, quite the opposite of feature creep bloat you see everywhere else, but even at the code level there is avoidance of function calls that can introduce another level of abstraction and complexity and contribute to bugs and failure. It is in this way that using the process of elimination we can come to some conclusions about where error is or can most certainly exist, philosophy.
On a hardware level, we have redundant backups and check system....
As such there is one area that neither software nor hardware has but only as a secondary or implimentation of, position.
Human error in concepts, beliefs, philosophies, abstraction definition variation, etc... That which exist before the hardware and software and often what hardware and software creation is inspired by, directed by, guide lined by, etc..
If the philosophy base is wrong then its limitations will manifest through the software and hardware created under such a philosophy and eventually show the limitations, via failure to perform.
There are plenty examples of human philosophy errors, such as how it wasn't until the early 1990's that the Catholic Church exonerated Galileo over his observation the earth revolved around the sun.
The Atlanta Centennial park bombing where the 911 system failed because no-one gave the park an address..... or is the philosophy of programming a 911 system to require an address the error? Or is it a good thing that all things needing 911 are at an address?
My pet peeve of the computer industry, the button on the front of the computer marked with a 0 & 1 symbol(s), yet over engineering has resulted in the meaning of those symbols to be more than "off & on" and this went further in removing the hard on off switch so that when the software based power switch failed, you have to physically unplug the computer from the wall, or take teh battery out.
The correct philosophy for such a switch would be a multi position switch, which the consumer doesn't have to know more than is obvious... And ultimately the motivating philosophy behind the software switch is that of creating an OS that needs a shutdown sequence and time for it. When you think of this "0&1" switch, what better representation of distorting the most basic and fundamental concept of computers with overcomplexifabulocation can there possible be?
Software and hardware is not where the error lies in this Air France tragedy, even if there is failure or limitations found there in hardware and software, but the failure is in not providing a manual override. And if the technology has been made to complex for manual control.... then let grandma crawl under the desk to unplug the damn computer....shut it down until the real problem is fixed.
BTW, due to the competitive commercial nature of aerospace software development tools, there is a level of incompatibility between them and as such there is also motive for playing the lockin game regardless of any "unforseen" risk to others. Perhaps there is a place for open source software here!!!
Don't bow down to the stone image (Stone = computer hardware - Image = software) of the beast of man, for the beast is error prone and his image can be no better. Instead take a closer look at the code.... with many eyes.....
"So you're nominated because you crashed Word 2007 three times in 20 minutes? Pussy.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It's in german..., but you'll understand it anyway....
What is the default mode if all computers go down (if there are even any)?
Are you completely SOL in a fly-by-wire setup?
This post reminded me of an article that was written a couple years ago about the people who program the space shuttle. I couldn't find a link to it, but I recall a similar article about the software on the Boeing 777; essentially the pilots are sitting in front of a computer screen that they can bring up any piece of data about the airplane, and how these systems must all co-exist without interfering in any way with the flight systems, etc. Pretty interesting reads.
Frankly, the pressure in such an environment has got to be *beyond* intense; you're being asked to write software to, in some cases, cheat physics, and if you get it wrong, everybody dies. I have great sympathy for pilots who have to use the software, knowing that you can train to handle just so much, but I also have sympathy for the developers who have to write the programs that have to handle so much more.
Pitot tubes were invented in the 1700s by the French Engineer Henry Pitot and later modified for airspeed measurements. They are also used to measure aerodynamic speed in Formula racing cars too among other uses. Here is a comprehensive article following the crash investigation that is informative with photographs and the timeline of theories.
I read both the articles posted. They do not qualify as the best investigation reports. They seem to be building "What if" scenarios from all data that is available. Other A330 failures (no recent crashes reported) and Other places where ice in Pitot tubes led to failure (The Wikipedia article has a lot of information on this and planes which had problems notably, the X31.) The investigators are clearly under pressure to say what they have found and they are unable to report "nothing" to the press. With no luck in recovering the Black Box, the investigators (like they talk about Pilots not good at flying aircraft without the aid of in-flight safety systems) have to do it the old forensic way (reminds me of Crichton's Airframe). That is going to take time and the press, the Aircraft companies using A330s are impatient to know why.
Clearly no recent theory has come close to deducing the true reason for the crash. As I remember the first news item that appeared on the AF447 was that the plane "vanished" from Radar and was sought for by the Brazilian Air Force before the crash site was positively identified. The last exchanges between the Pilot and the Aircraft tower followed by an automated message from the aircraft remain the main clues apart from the debris in this horrific accident.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
There are a couple of aspects about the A330 problems that amaze me:
1. How can an airplane be allowed to carry passengers when the margin to airframe disintegration is so narrow? I can understand falling out of the sky if it stalls, but to be able to tear the airplane apart in level flight? What happened to margin of safety in airframe construction -- or is that whole concept now obsolete?
2. If the airplane can send fault messages home, why don't blackbox data streams get sent as well? At least that way there would be some situation info available as opposed to none.
3. In some ways reliance on flight computers is like reliance on spreadsheets or calculators -- if you do not understand what is going on and are not capable of doing it yourself then you cannot tell if the software is correct. Essentially, if the computer says it is so then it is, and you either survive or not.
This is why I really want any airplane I'm flying to LISTEN to me, not argue with me... At no point should a computer be able to override pilot input. Also, i want a solid mechanical link between the controls I'm pushing on and the control surfaces on the wings... That way, even if EVERY computer on the plane dies, I can still control the damn thing...
And yes IAAAP... (I Am An Airline Pilot)
Last time I checked the air france black box recorder hasn't been located let alone pulled out of the ocean. Without having the black box how can the NTSB be making speculations as to the cause of the downed flight? Others are speculating things like the Rudder had problems, Turbulence, this computer bug.
Until they know what the actual cause is they should avoid speculation because it does absolutely nothing other then fill media headlines with non-sense.
Investigators suspected the computers a good 3 weeks ago, so I'm not sure how this qualifies as news.
Take a look at this resume and what it implies:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/parul-goyal/b/b57/a
The instruction was probably "thank you rebooted systems" instead of "please reboot system"
I'm never getting on an Airbus.
I was modded down here multiple times for saying just this earlier. What is funny is that this issue is already KNOWN amongst commercial pilots. Just the idiots around that do not know, but want to mod ppl down because they support Airbus.
What about, you know... manual control?
Sure there are no mechanic cables anymore, but a wire controls the low-level hardware.
But at least it has to have just as basic piece of electronics that has no software or big complexity, and that allows you to manually steer the plane.
(No, that is not too hard to do, even on such big jets. You just have to be more careful about quick actions, stalling the plane & co.)
A piece of electronics that is so simple, that the only thing killing it, is an electric shock right into its mainboard.
Electronics failure is never a cause! (Because: What would that be?)
The reason usually is a software error, that electric shock, or some other external source.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Other Airbus crashes involving computer/human interaction failures: http://markpknowles.com/first-airbus-crash-photos/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EM0hDchVlY These machines are totally fly by wire = no computer, no fly.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Does anyone know??? I'll reserve further comments until this is known.
Did the pilots shut down the flight computers in an effort to get the controls to respond appropriately? Professional Pilots are "do-ers", and right or wrong, they ALWAYS have a reason for their choices.
Did the flight computer failure mode fail to (dis)engage? I've heard about the manual control levels that an Airbus flight system degrades through. It looks like the computer wouldn't get out of the way soon enough, so the flight crew kicked it in the head.
They received the airplane in a un-recoverable, un-flyable, disintegrating condition from mach turbulence destroying lift and ultimately the aircraft. (coffin corner)
Cascading failures generally occur from a synergy of multiple causes. In this case:
- A narrow flight envelope due to altitude and varying wind-speed in the storm. (had they climbed, trying to avoid the storm?)
- Pilot over-reliance on automated flight assist in marginal conditions.
- Failure of physical airspeed instruments due to severe icing from a massive updraft.
- Increased thrust from engines ingesting water contained in the 100mph updraft. (coffin corner!)
- Altitude increase from 100 mph updraft. (coffin corner!)
- Inappropriate computer control responses, destabilizing flight dynamics, leading to overspeed and unrecoverable loss of lift (mach stall).
- Turbulence and chaos of a severe storm masking the initial flight computer deviations.
Scary stuff.
The Wall Street Journal article oversimplifies the problem with the Airbus
design philosophy. In effect; Too Damn Much reliance on the automated flight
control system for basic safety-of-flight.
A prime example?
Rudder hinges.
Airbus has notoriously
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587
underbuilt the rudder hinges on the A300 (and, no doubt, the A330) in the
interest of lightness and efficiency. They have chosen to rely on the
automated flight control system to limit loads on the structure, instead of
building the necessary robustness into that structure.
This is great when flight conditions are all peachy, but in a thunderstorm, at
night, with sensors (iced-up pitot tubes?) that are prone to failure, well
then you have a failure scenario that the designers never built into their
simulations, and the rescue/recovery teams in the south Atlantic find the
rudder 37 miles from the rest of the wreckage.
Forwarded from a colleague (names redacted);
>> This from a friend and NWA pilot I flew the B-757
>> with out of our Tokyo base.........Now obviously on the A-330
>>
>>
>> Well, I'm sure you have all heard of the Air France accident. I fly
>> the same plane, the A330.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yesterday while coming up from Hong Kong to Tokyo , a 1700nm
>> 4hr. flight, we experienced the same problems Air France had while
>> flying thru bad weather.
>> I have a link to the failures that occurred on AF 447. My list is
>> almost the same.
>> http://www.eurocockpit.com/images/acars447.php
>>
>> The problem I suspect is the pitot tubes ice over and you
>> loose your airspeed indication along with the auto pilot, auto
>> throttles and rudder limit protection. The rudder limit protection
>> keeps you from over stressing the rudder at high speed.
>>
>> Synopsis;
>> Tuesday 23, 2009 10am enroute HKG to NRT. Entering Nara Japan
>> airspace.
>>
>> FL390 mostly clear with occasional isolated areas of rain,
>> clouds tops about FL410.
>> Outside air temperature was -50C TAT -21C (your not supposed to get
>> liquid water at these temps). We did.
>>
>> As we were following other aircraft along our route. We
>> approached a large area of rain below us. Tilting the weather radar
>> down we could see the heavy rain below, displayed in red. At our
>> altitude the radar indicated green or light precipitation, most
>> likely ice crystals we thought.
>>
>> Entering the cloud tops we experienced just light to moderate
>> turbulence. (The winds were around 30kts at altitude.) After about
>> 15 sec. we encountered moderate rain. We thought it odd to have
>> rain streaming up the windshield at this altitude and the sound of
>> the plane getting pelted like an aluminum garage door. It got very
>> warm and humid in the cockpit all of a sudden.
>> Five seconds later the Captains, First Officers, and standby
>> airspeed indicators rolled back to 60kts. The auto pilot and auto
>> throttles disengaged. The Master Warning and Master Caution
>> flashed, and the sounds of chirps and clicks letting us know these
>> things were happening.
>> The Capt. hand flew the plane on the shortest
>> vector out of the rain. The airspeed indicators briefly came back
>> but failed again. The failure lasted for THREE minutes. We flew the
>> recommended 83%N1 power setting. When the airspeed indicators came
>> back. we were within 5 knots of our desired
Like any other part of the plane, the computer is just another instrument designed and manufactured by people. Blame the programmer, the tester, the lack of analysis. The cause of this accident has nothing to do with computers. They just do what we tell them to. Leave them alone.
Okay. That's just silly.
There is clearly some major pressure to build a presentable story to the public if they're floating ideas like these ones. If the PR is successful, Official Culture will soon include passenger jets which will break up from 'excessive' flying.
A significant air blast from one of the increasingly frequent falling rocks from outer space could easily account for this disaster, and could explain some of the more peculiar details.
--Quoted from this article which digs into the idea of this event being another case of "Is it just me ore do there seem to be a lot more ROCKS FROM SPACE falling around our ears lately?".
-FL
Thank you for being honest about this. Seems like the majority of the posts are Airbus propaganda... It's not like they wouldn't have the money to pay people to preach what they want, and it's one company that I wouldn't put it past them either.
I believe that the Airbus aircraft are pure fly-by-wire (die-by-wire). Meaning they have no physical connections between the cockpit controls and the control surfaces. No hydraulics, no cables, nuttin.
So, when the computers went bye bye, then everyone was in a huge version of a paper airplane.
Computers should not fly planes unless you have an ejector seat.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Oh god :O
I'm working with computers right now :O
There's a whole rack of servers right next to me. :O
If I don't post again, tell my wife and kids I love them!
Remember the DC-10 that crashed in IOWA? It took two guys trying to control it without hydraulics. Personally, given the choice of hydraulics OR electric motors, I would take electric motors. Electric is CHEAP AND SAFE to have redundant electrical lines. In addition, losing one, does not mean that you lose the whole aircraft like Walt Lux did in the AA dc-10 that crashed at O'hare. The problem with the Airbus is that Airbus designed the CPU to take control of the craft. If the pitot tubes are blocked, the sensor will think that the aircraft is moving at 0 knots and will DIVE IT. Since it still does not know the speed, it will continue to dive it faster and faster until stress ripped the plane apart. Sadly, this has happened on MULTIPLE issues with the plane, and had it all blamed on "PILOT ERROR". When this is done, I think that AA and several other companies will be suing the pants off Airbus for their design as well as hiding facts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
it is to stop up the drain' is the actual quote, which is far better
Hold the outsourcer accountable - the method name invoked is in a local dialect which stymied European developers. They believed "A330.greenDam()" meant "turn on auto-pilot when entering storm", instead of "turn off auto-pilot when entering storm".
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
Seriously? You think they would run such a system using general computers? If true, I guess that would fall under the same logic that hiring H1B Visa immigrants/outsourcing projects will produce the same results and be cheaper. I swear, the current generation in power is turning out to be nothing but cowards and liars. (Looking deeper, they appear to be affected by narcissism -- Blagojevich, Geithner, Madoff, Sotomayor, Obama, et al..) I know I switched subjects, but that's something I felt needed saying.
If the philosophy base is wrong then its limitations will manifest through the software and hardware created under such a philosophy and eventually show the limitations....
Perhaps there is a place for open source software here!!!
Don't bow down to the stone image (Stone = computer hardware - Image = software) of the beast of man, for the beast is error prone and his image can be no better. Instead take a closer look at the code.... with many eyes.....
And the invisible, virginal Spirit rejoiced over the light which came forth, that which was brought forth first by the first power of his forethought, which is Richard Stallman. For Open Source is the richness of the light; the remembrance of the pleroma.
Recently there was an even more biased article on slashdot about the topic..... ok a few short thoughts a) Watch old movies and tell me hoe many people you see in the cockpit in a transatlantic flight. Tell me how many you see today. Automation helps reducing work. You can invest that free work into more safety (e.g. pilots beeing able to look onto the map for the next few hours instead of beeing busy with what is goin on now) or you can redice costs (or both) b) has it ever occure to the people criticizing the automated systems that these may have opened new limits of where (height) you can operate a airplane for a given cost (e.g. fuel). Without advanded controll systems one should probably avoid unsuitable height os have an additional espeed/ngine controller person c) Even if you have an engine controller, if you would ask e who is better at maintaining the right engine power, it take the automated system. I seriously doubt that humans having the same sensor data would make a better decistion in average
"Company travel is now restricted to the A330 until a solution is found."
"Old bag" has more than one meaning.
Remember that the Wall Street Journal authors apparently have no knowledge whatsoever of technical things. That doesn't stop them from writing articles about technical things, however.
Air France didn't begin replacing the malfunctioning pitot tubes in the Airbus until April 2009, and the tubes were not replaced yet in the crashed aircraft. The computers were not at fault apparently; there is no reason to suspect a computer malfunction.
Notice that the Wall Street Journal article, Computer Failures Are Probed in Jet Crash, says exactly that: "... seemingly beginning with malfunctioning airspeed sensors..." The "airspeed sensors" are the pitot tubes, which in the Airbus have been known for many years to collect ice in unusual conditions, and to stop giving reliable data.
The computers did what they were programmed to do, apparently. They stopped operating when they calculated that the data was bad. At that point the pilots needed to fly the plane themselves. However, the aircraft was operating in what is known in the aircraft industry as the coffin corner". There was apparently no way a human could fly the aircraft safely at the speeds necessary to get the craft to France in time, since in a severe thunderstorm the airspeed could not be known accurately enough to prevent overstressing the aircraft.
The Wall Street Journal apparently has NO new information. Here is a quote from the article: "The Air France crash could become the first since the 1980s in which U.S. and European investigators try to piece together a probable cause in a high-profile crash without the help of information from at least one of the plane's black boxes -- the digital recorders containing detailed flight data and cockpit conversations from the flight." There is apparently NO honest reason for the Wall Street Journal to publish an article now, claiming "Computer Failures".
Quote from a June 25, 2009 Aviation Week article, EASA: No Action Soon On A330 Pitot Tubes published three days ago: "The pitot tubes have come under fire in the wake of the crash of AF447 because the accident aircraft, an A330-200, broadcast maintenance messages just before all contact was lost, indicating inconsistent speed information and potential problems with the pitot tube."
Should the Wall Street Journal be trusted for financial information? Apparently the publication did NOTHING to stop the present corruption in the financial departments of the U.S. government. Warren Buffett very publically called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction" beginning in 2002. The corruption was caused by the removal of laws designed to prevent fraud, at the beginning of George W. Bush's first term.
Apparently the Wall Street Journal always serves the profit of its advertisers and others in the U.S. financial industry. If publishing the article at this time and in the way it did indicates anything other than ignorance, it could be theorized that someone connected with the publication has investments in Air France or Airbus Industries.
Other similar incidents concerning the Airbus 330 are being investigated, according to a June 25, 2009 Associated Press news release, US panel probes 2 incidents involving Airbus A330s. The Wall Street Journal has access to the Associated Press, obviously. Why did it publish its misleading article two days later, which appears to blame the "computers"? The REAL story is apparently that apparently such incidents with the Airbus are common.
Here
The black box concept looks like a huge anachronism to me. It wouldn't be insanely expensive to uplink the data in real time. But I guess they'll be offering hispeed Internet to business class passengers long before they'll think of using same radio links to stream safety relevant data that is currently recorded to the black box or not at all. Even if the plane had only squaked its GPS posit, heading and speed every second or so, this would have cut days off the initial search for the wreckage. Add vital plane health stats to that info, and you take days or weeks off the investigation.
How does this show that real A320s don't have five flight computers or that any one of them can fly the plane or that a crew would never be under the table trying to 'reboot' them?
"you can see the border of the simulator room projection screen outside of the cockpit"
Really? I thought it was the pilot *saying* it's a simulator that gave the game away.
No sig today...
It is Java to blame.
They had a crappy Websphere-based onboard system.
Actually, there are cases where the pilots saved the day though there were no preset procedures and they had to "wing it" ;).
There was no preset procedure for flying when all four 747 engines shut down due to volcanic ash, and the cockpit windows get ash-blasted so the pilots can barely see out of them.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
But they still managed to make it to the airport and land without anybody dying or getting injured.
And for some reason there wasn't a preset procedure for gliding when out of fuel for Air Canada 767 pilots (they only simulated one engine landings, not zero engine landings!)- see the Gimli Glider. And even Gimli wasn't listed as a potential landing site in Air Canada's manuals. The pilot just happened to know of its existence.
Then there was the case of "complete loss of hydraulic flight control systems due to being hit by a surface to air missile". I doubt there's a preset procedure in DHL's flight training manual for that ;).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident
Fortunately the pilot there had attended a seminar given by the captain of United 232 who had to fly a plane a similar way (which was a less fortunate flight as lots of people died).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
That said, in the Gimli Glider case I think a computer could actually help a lot, assuming the sensors still work. But in the case of being hit by a missile, I think a skilled human pilot who doesn't want to die, is going to be better than a programmer+computer or "preset procedure guy" at "saving the day".
Preset procedures and computer assistance are good help, especially for mediocre pilots. You don't want them to do the wrong thing.
But the procedure writer can't list all the weird stuff, way in advance. There are too many possible weird things that could happen to list down usefully for pilots to follow.
And the programmer won't dare program those into the computer, because a slight difference in the assumptions could be disastrous.
When the preset procedures don't fit, what you need is pilots that have a good sense of what the plane can do, then often they can figure out what the plane can and cannot do when bits fail or get blown away.
tl;dr version:
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
--Charles Babbage
This signature serves no purpose other than to help you see which posts were made by me.
Inquiring minds want to know!
It also turns out that computers probably caused the DC Metro crash killing nine last weeks. Coincidence?
This video shows an Airbus pilot switching off the flight computers then barrel rolling an A320: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2KygSyVE58
Give me a break. This whole thing was taken in a simulator, which are *programmed* to behave how they think the airplanes will behave, using recorded data from test flights to help. Because they do not test the airframes in extreme attitudes (especially barrel rolls), they have little to no data with which to program the simulator, making demonstrations like this complete nonsense.
At 3:02 into the video you just posted, the pilot admits, "Not a maneuver you'd normally see in an airliner, and in fact you probably couldn't do it in a real airplane."
I'm not sure what you were trying to prove. This video doesn't prove anything.
Any belief that Airbus pilots are somehow under the communist thumb and that square-jawed Boeing pilots would heave manfully at the controls and save the say is, um, 100% laughable.
LOL, this is the absolute definition of the straw man argument. The great-grandparent never made such a claim; just an apolitical observation that he was scared that computers fly the planes and not skilled pilots.
Stop trying to turn this engineering discussion into a US vs. Europe, Boeing vs. Airbus religious war. Your post is a troll, I'm afraid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501
from TFA "The recorders are designed to have enough battery power to last for at least 30 days"
They don't write it to flash????
Building planes to pass the sound barrier is fundamentally different from building them for sub-sonic speeds. The reason that it is called the sound barrier is that passing through your own sound wave is like flying into a wall. Planes that can do this are very sturdy, which means that they are very heavy. This makes them impractical (uses lots of fuel and does not have much cargo space) for virtually any civilian application.
On the other hand, planes that fly below mach 1 need to have motors strong enough accelerate the vehicle rather quickly from a stop in order to take off. If you leave the motors revved up once you hit cruising speed, the plane will keep accelerating until it hits the sound barrier and falls apart.
How a broken airspeed indicator could cause this should be obvious: if the air speed indicator is clogged, the computer (or pilot) will think the plane is going too slow and push more juice to the engines. Eventually the engines will push the plane into the sound barrier and destroy it.
This may be a dumb question, but would it at all be technically feasible for flight data recorders to uplink, say, an encrypted data-stream to some available satellite whenever things start to go pear-shaped?
You are correct in stating that a pitot tube malfunction is not a computer malfunction. The question becomes how did the pilots handle that. Your 100% correct in stating that a plane could accelarate through "coffin corner" and break apart. I'm suprised that there isn't a better web reference than WSJ for updates to an aircraft story.
In Soviet Russia ^H^H^H America, The bank finances YOU!
Hey, we barely have the tail of the plane, and now journalists are be able to diagnosis a computer bug. Seriously...
Everyone here is talking directly from his own ass. You're no aerospace engineer. Most of you are CS majors and know no physics. Most of you know nothing about planes. No one of you is private to the investigation. Many of the comments here don't make sense from even a basic physic point of view.
We(we in the sense the world) have no black boxes. We have some parts of the airplane and 50 bodies. We have the messages transmitted automatically by the plane. The BEA is in charge of the investigation and the elements they have are scarce. Even for these experts, it will be hard to explain how the plane was lost. We can only hope they find the black boxes. Yet, slashdot's armchair aerospace engineers already know the cause of the accident. You're just morons who think too highly of yourselves. This is not news for nerds here. It's news for idiots who think they have a brain. 99% of the posts here are worthless pretentious drivel filled with false information especially in science discussion.
YOU are so incompetent that you can't even see you know exactly nothing about the subject at hand. I'm pretty sure you could not even solve hydrostatic problems which is ultra easy compared to fluid dynamics which is only a small part on how to make a plane fly. Yet you're writing posts on how it's obvious it must have been factor X that's the cause.
If you want to learn about science, the first thing to do is to quit reading slashdot, news for ignorant know it all. Then buy textbooks, science books and study hard. And above all, stop debating on the internet or anywhere, debate is a tool for marketroids not for scientists. It's always about who spouts the most fallacies in a given time.
Unless you are a pilot or work for Air France I suggest you have no knowledge and should refrain from speculation. Ooops, too late, wankers ahoy.
This is what's wrong with the internet. Before the end of this discussion, there are people relying on previous posts to post their assumptions as fact.
...
You are all twats !
All you cunts talking about rudders coming off - it was a boeing you tossers, I saw a program about it on TV ! The computer in Airbus planes is not in complete control. The NTSC has NOTHING to do with this investigation ! The summary doesn't claim the NTSC have anything to do with this investigation, they say they are investigating other UNRELATED incidents.
Pricks !
I'm just waiting for the post alleging that Iran's internet policy is responsible and we should all send mobile phones to Brazil to save lives
Anybody who talks utter shit on this thread can not expect unquestioning belief, or even basic respect, on any other thread ever, GOT IT ?
No, not even respect - if you show none, don't expect any yourself.
You seem to know what you're talking about, so I'll ask you. The airframe that I maintain uses all heated air data sensors. They don't just get warm; they are a serious hazard when the plane has just landed or the sensors are being tested. I am curious since I have not worked on commercial liners, but aren't heated probes de rigeur on airframes that fly above a certain altitude?
Or was this an error of the heating system, or what?
Just curious.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Actually... Aircraft can break apart due to excess speed, or more importantly "high speed buffeting" Commercial Airliners fly at a very narrow range. Known as Coffin Corner Where the aircraft is neither low-speed or high speed buffeting.
In Soviet Russia ^H^H^H America, The bank finances YOU!
Thank you!
Airbus Whistleblower faces prison
What's really sad, is something as simple as a iPhone could have potentially saved them. I've got a GPS app on my iPhone that will give me speed, altitude, etc.
Such a unit could have been used to "check" the instruments. Am I advocating iPhones for airlines. No, not really...but couldn't a basic handheld, self-contained GPS device that provides secondary speed, altitude, etc. Be a useful system to counter-check the flight info during such a crisis?
WSJ bad... comment links to an extremely important article in Rolling Stone magazine.
could be better translated as... I am a left wing guy trashing the WSJ with my own smear campaign and then going off topic to promote my own agenda by inviting readers to check out another smear campaign conducted this time by Rolling Stone.
This is my sig.
The articles are pure FUD, and the summary is worse.
Thanks for clearing it up... on Airbus, the computers help the pilot, unless the plane is crashing...
This is my sig.
This video shows an Airbus pilot switching off the flight computers then barrel rolling an A320:
this is a flight simulator, dude.
The pilots would not have shut down the computers because that would have almost totaly debilitated the aircraft. These aircraft have glass cockpits with electronic displays and only vital backup instruments. A large modern airplane ususaly needs a computer do do some calculations or the pilot would be overwhelmed. I fly small aircraft and some have systems evan more advances than these. We use glass cockpits and if we shut down our computers we would have very little information (pitch, airspeed, compass, and altitude) and almost no navigation, and from my understanding this accident occured at night which would leave them with just there last location since shuting down computers and there direction. Trust me it is very difficult to fly with just those instruments. It can evan be difficult flying a night with all of the instruments.
I don't know about the Concorde but in the case of planes like the airbus with the safety measures active you could do a desperate control like full hard right, and the plane will just bank right to the max of 67 degrees.
It just won't end up rolling (unless you turn off the restrictions). BUT the thing is, in most cases that's what the pilot wants anyway, even emergency cases.
You could try a 90 degree bank, but the plane might break up or crash anyway, or you could still end up killing almost the same numbers of passengers. They're not fighter jets with pilots in g suits.
Same thing goes for a "full pull up" to try to avoid hitting stuff. They don't want to stall and lose height (and make it even more likely for a crash). So the plane provides the max power available at the moment, and limits the angle of attack based on the airspeed to something that won't stall the plane.
If that's not enough, I doubt even "direct control" will help.
Sometimes the plane and people in it are just doomed and there's nothing the computers and pilots can do about it once they've gone down that path.
Only way out is to not be in that situation in the first place. Better training, screening, discipline, maintenance etc.
Yes, they are heated. Here is a brochure: Thales Airbus sensors and probes.
"Or was this an error of the heating system, or what?"
I don't know the answer, and I don't find anyone claiming to know. I'm guessing that there is a subtle design error. If I could hold a Thales pitot in my hand I might be qualified to theorize why it fails. But I would not be qualified to design a better one, although maybe I could help do the design.
Apparently there are no problems with the Goodrich pitot sensors. (PDF file)
I've been studying how the world deals with issues such as this one. There are cover-ups as money is spent to influence and confuse the media. But now there is a huge difference from 20 years ago. Now the pilots, who don't want to lose their lives, have a voice. There are numerous blogs with many interesting comments. For example, now the media is being fed the apparent lie that the problems with the pitot sensors are new. But someone posted this TFU [technical follow-up], showing a report from December of 1995: TFU 34.13.00.005. Here is someone asking a question about that: Question: The problem was known since 1995. Why such long time for correcting the default?
None of the authors of articles for news agencies seem to have any technical knowledge. In the past it didn't matter, since the rich didn't want you to know. In the past people had to accept whatever the news media said.
Since the Thales sensors are being replaced, the smart thing would be to get one that has just been removed and examine it.
this will piss off 'professional pilots' especially the ones with raybans, but the number accidents of accidents - even remotely - related to computer failures pale in front of plain pilot stupidity. I am not talking about pilot error / training /skills /judgement, I am talking about stupidity. Like flying to the ground while chatting in the cockpit, or having no idea where the plane is and where it is going while scratching their balls.
a small list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain
just to put things into perspective
I may be wrong but it's my understanding that in order for an aircraft to be certified for flight into known icing conditions, the pitot tube must be heated. The question is whether the certification testing was sufficiently rigorous; it's possible this Airbus (and, apparently, several others) were flown in conditions that made the pitot tubes unreliable, but weren't encountered during simulations or testing.
The amount of heat required to keep something ice-free in icing conditions at near-transonic speed is *enormous*, and doing so while keeping the readings accurate is a pretty serious engineering problem.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
You forgot some steps:
A330:
1. Computer in control every flight for months
2. Pilots' skills and awareness degrade.
3. Sensors fail
4. Computer: "sorry dudes, you're on your own"
5. Rusty, out-of-the-loop pilots thrown into control
6. Pilots: "Fuck, I'd better troubleshoot the computers"
Here's the same for a B767:
1. Pilots in control, maintaining their skills, developing aircraft and weather awareness
2. Sensors fail
3. Seasoned pilots: "Fuck, it's a good thing I can fly this thing in my sleep"
Wah!
"so how would a plane without computers have fared any better?"
In a plane without computers, the airspeed indicator would show lower than actual airspeed. Pilots are trained to recognize this happening. The failure would have been isolated. If fluctuating sensor readings were the trigger that crashed other computers and took pilot attention away from actually flying the aircraft, 447 would have arrived that fateful day. That doesn't mean computer controlled planes are bad though, because the computers also make a lot of the mundane tasks of flying infinitely easier.
"It's also complete bullshit to say that the pilots can't override the computers. In normal flight, the computers *aid* the pilots. "
I'm not saying which is better, because each has advantages, but in newer Airbuses this is demonstrably false. Airbuses use fly by wire. The plane controls have no direct connection to the control surfaces. The yoke is a digital encoder that sends data to the flight control computer, which moves actuators on the control surfaces. If the right computer goes down, you have absolutely no control of an Airbus aircraft.
"closer to the stall speed than a Boeing pilot would ever dare to go. Meanwhile, the pilot can look out the window instead of at an instrument panel!"
In a possible collision, pilots absolutely do not look at the instruments, they look out the window. The advantage to Boeing manual flight controls is in an emergency, pilots can make flight commands outside of the engineering specs of the plane. Frequently the plane will survive, and the extra maneuverability might prevent the collision. I am sure there is significant code in the Airbus that tries to recognize evasive maneuvers, and allow commands outside of the normal fight envelope.
"avoiding a collision is easier in an Airbus, because pilots can just pull the stick back hard and the computers will automatically give the best possible climb performance"
Theoretically this is true, but it doesn't always work that way. The Airbus in New Jersey allowed the rudder pedal movements of the First Officer to snap the vertical stabilizer off the plane.
"the aircraft didn't "let him" because even maximum performance wasn't enough and the plane would have dropped like a stone had it been a Boeing. The computers probably saved everyone who did walk away from that crash!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
The cause of the accident is disputed, but there is enough evidence to implicate the computers as the cause of the crash and not the savior of some of the people. The altimeter supposedly read 100 feet while the plane was at 30 feet. The plane also didn't respond to take off power, possibly because it was stuck in landing configuration. Additionally much evidence was destroyed or improperly handled.
"IF the computers actually malfunction, they will turn themselves off. If they don't, the pilots can turn them off manually."
They don't, they flag their output as suspect and disconnect from the flight control computer. The flight control computer in an Airbus can not turn off or you lose control of the aircraft.
Well let me tell you. You absolutely can not do it. When your airspeed indicator is faulty you have to set to a power setting in a table based upon configuration of the plane. You have no idea how fast it is going.
The EU has mandated the elimination of lead from solder, rendering it it vulnerable to whisker production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)
Why the hell was an ENTIRE DISCUSSION THREAD moderated as -1 Redundant? It's not like we were just parroting exactly what someone else said, this thread was so deep the mods had to mod -1 to the PARENT and THE GRANDPARENT to which I replied. That takes a whole lot of mod points!
Yeah, go ahead and mod down threads of discussion with critical insights, I guess that's what Slashdot is all about.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Since the DS was sold during the '70s, if Citroen was in your country until the early '80s, then cars with power brakes (not power-assisted) were sold in your country; which was, I think, my original point.
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