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Further Comment on the IEEE Spectrum article concerning MCAS
Gregory Travis has responded to my comments in the Risks Forum Digest at https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31/22#subj23 . He includes a wealth of interesting new information. He only disagrees with one of the points I made concerning the accuracy of his article, namely the categorisation of the frequency of failure of AoA sensors. I said Travis suggests AoA sensors…
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IEEE Spectrum on Possible Software Involvement in Two Recent Airliner Crashes
(This article is a modified version of one which appeared in the ACM Risks Forum Digest, Issue 31.21) Gregory Travis published an article on 2019-04-18 on the involvement of the MCAS software on Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in two recent crashes, Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, in IEEE Spectrum. The article…
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The Accident to SpaceShip Two
Alister Macintyre noted in the Risks Forum 28.83 that the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released results of their investigation into the October 31, 2014 crash of SpaceShipTwo near Mojave, California. The NTSB has released a preliminary summary, findings and safety recommendations for the purpose of holding the public hearing on July 28, 2015.…
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Thoughts After 4U 9525 / GWI18G
It is astonishing, maybe unique, about the Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 event how quickly it seems to have been explanatorily resolved. Egyptair Flight 990 (1999) took the “usual time” with the NTSB until it was resolved, and at the end certain participants in the investigation were still maintaining that technical problems with elevator/stabiliser had not…
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Germanwings Flight 4U 9525
19:15 CEST on Friday 3rd April The BEA have recovered the Flight Data Recorder and read it. They issued a communiqué. Here is my translation of the pertinent paragraph: At a first reading it appears that the pilot in the cockpit used the autopilot to command a descent to an altitude of 100 ft, then,…
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Hijacking a Boeing 777 Electronically
John Downer pointed me to an article in the Sunday Express, which appears to be one of their most-read: World’s first cyber hijack: was missing Malaysia Airlines plane hacked with mobile phone? by James Fielding and Stuart Winter. The answer is no. To see why, read on. The authors interviewed a Dr. Sally Leivesley, who…
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Aerial Collision Avoidance
Just over a decade ago, in July 2002, there was a catastrophic mid-air collision of a Russian passenger aircraft heading westwards and a freighter aircraft of DHL heading northward, near the town of Überlingen on Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Southern Germany near the Swiss border. I wrote a paper on it about a month later,…
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The Accident to Qantas Flight 72, VH-QPA, in October 2008
The Airbus A330-303 VH-QPA experienced uncommanded nose-down pitch commands while in cruise at FL370. Lots of unsecured people were thrown to the ceiling, and some were injured severely. The aircraft declared an emergency and landed as soon as practicable, at Learmonth, where the injured were treated and several hospitalised. It has been known for a…
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Concorde, Ten Years On, Part 2
The Concorde accident to F-BTSC on 25 July 2000 is about as well understood as to causes as any accident can be. There is also, unusually, a more or less linear connection of causes from an exceptionally rare event: the deposition of a particularly hard and sharp strip of metal, which shouldn’t have been mounted…