Slashdot Mirror
Data Entry Blunders Force Air Asia Pilots To Land in Melbourne Instead of Malaysia (mashable.com)
A flight from Sydney to Malaysia ended up in Melbourne after the captain incorrectly entered the plane's location in its navigation system just before take-off, according to a safety investigation, whose conclusion was published this week. Mashable reports:The Air Asia pilots made several errors in entering data into the aircraft's navigation system, which caused them to follow an incorrect flight path out of Sydney, according to Australian transportation officials. While troubleshooting the incorrect flight path, the pilots were unable to fix the issue, and may have compounded it. The aircraft's systems would not allow the plane to be flown in instrument conditions and the weather also had deteriorated in Sydney by the time the pilots decided to turn back. They were directed via radar to a visual approach in Melbourne where they could land safely. The pilots did not believe the airport was located in Malaysia.
This is a much more complicated and interesting story than the headline or first glance would suggest. (because as is common, the headline makes it sound like a bunch of bungling pilots from a LCC airline were flailing about stupidly, which is not the case)
The omission of a trailing zero digit in the manual entry of longitude during system initialization caused serious autopilot/navigation problems that were not resolved by automated cross-checks that should've caught it. (Error #1)
Then, as a result of trying to fix/diagnose the problem on the fly, the flight display/instruments were put into a failure/safe mode where only visual flight conditions could be handled (Error #2).
It turned out ok in this case (just a diversion), but if the weather had been poor or other combinations of conditions existed, it could've easily gone wrong. Very interesting...