http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/20/bug_cause_aussie_a330_plunge/ By Iain Thomson The Register 20th December 2011 The final report into the 2008 Qantas flight QF72, which unexpectedly dived twice during a routine flight, has blamed a combination of software and hardware errors for the incident. On 7 October 2008, the Australian-owned A330-303 aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet when the autopilot disengaged and the aircraft rose, before plunging downwards sharply, injuring 110 of the aircraft’s 303 passengers and three-quarters of the cabin crew. Three minutes later the aircraft did it again, and the flight crew was bombarded with warnings from the instrumentation -- almost all of them false. The pilots issued a PAN distress call, but upgraded this to MAYDAY after seeing the seriousness of the injuries onboard. They disabled the automatic pilot and throttle control systems and then managed the approach and landing at Learmonth, Western Australia using backup instruments. Since the source of the problems couldn’t be immediately identified the crew used manual pressurisation control and braking equipment because the automatic systems weren’t trusted. In all, 51 passengers and crew required hospitalisation following the incident. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s (ATSB) final report found that one of the three air data inertial reference units (ADIRUs) installed on the A330-303 aircraft began to malfunction and went into failure mode before the incident. It then began feeding false information into the flight control systems, and the software algorithms designed to handle the information couldn’t cope, causing the erratic behavior. [...] _____________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isnReceived on Wed Dec 21 2011 - 00:51:16 PST
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