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Software Bug Caused Qantas Airbus A330 To Nose-Dive
pdcull writes "According to Stuff.co.nz, the Australian Transport Safety Board found that a software bug was responsible for a Qantas Airbus A330 nose-diving twice while at cruising altitude, injuring 12 people seriously and causing 39 to be taken to the hospital. The event, which happened three years ago, was found to be caused by an airspeed sensor malfunction, linked to a bug in an algorithm which 'translated the sensors' data into actions, where the flight control computer could put the plane into a nosedive using bad data from just one sensor.' A software update was installed in November 2009, and the ATSB concluded that 'as a result of this redesign, passengers, crew and operators can be confident that the same type of accident will not reoccur.' I can't help wondering just how a piece of code, which presumably didn't test its input data for validity before acting on it, could become part of a modern jet's onboard software suite?"
Still, it would most likely be your own fault. But with Google driverless car it doesn't matter if you're a good driver and drive carefully or not, because you could get killed anyway. I know it's not always your own fault, but you can affect that. With driverless you cannot.
Which is actually Airbus relies on sensor input over the "pilot". Boeing believes in the opposite. I'm inclined to believe Airbus in that the majority of accidents are human error over computer error.
Yeah, right. The computer is unable to fly the plane, so it suddenly dumps control into the hands of the pilot who has spent the last three hours drinking coffee, playing Angry Birds on his iPad and chatting up the head stewardess, and they crash. And it's 'human error'.