Qantas Blames Wireless For Aircraft Incidents 773
musther writes "An Australian airline Qantas Airbus A330-300, suffered 'a sudden change of altitude' on Tuesday. "The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin." Now it seems Qantas is seeking to blame interference from passenger electronics, and it's not the first time; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.' Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' — I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."
Channel Reuse & Interference (Score:5, Informative)
Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' -- I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse.
Well, Wikipedia has a great section [wikipedia.org] on this.
Following from reading that, I would need to see whether Quantas planes have a lack of shielding somewhere that would make this a vulnerability. In the defense of so many airlines and the FAA, I will state that I would rather read a book than work on a laptop if it means reducing a very low risk. That risk being that I am operating in a range that interferes with a device that is crucial to flight and also improperly shielded.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
It's important to note that in a modern aircraft, there is a closed loop between the navigation system and the control system. Almost the entire flight is flown by the autopilot based on GPS and other navigational aids. While most planes still have backup pressure-based altitude instruments, GPS is even used for altitude calculation.
So I suspect it's not that the wireless is interfering with the fly-by-wire control mechanism, but making the navigation system think that the altitude is significantly off. Assuming that is, in fact, the cause.
(I can confirm that on small aircraft wireless devices that produce a lot of interference can muck with electronic instruments, but I hadn't heard about it seriously affecting a large aircraft's systems before.)
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:1, Informative)
Agreed.
Also it's ridiculous to think an infrared-colored mouse could cause interference. Being optical, there's no way it could penetrate and interfere with the wiring behind a WALL on an airplane. Light does not penetrate solid objects!
The folks at Airbus are just dodging blame like kid trying to pretend he didn't spill the milk. "The dog did it." "Um, er, the mouse did."
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, it is always a tradeof.
Modern airplanes have a huge length (and mass) of wires running trough it and perfect shielding (besides the cost) would add far too much weight. The solution used is to shield the calculators and use robust communication protocols such as ARINC A429 between them. Of course, even with no weight constraints, they still can't shield some captors for obvious reasons and usualy rely on redundancy to offset the risks caused by a polluted measurement.
Re:are they fly by wire?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Informative)
True, but as usual it's not a simple decision. If the computer detects that the plane is in a situation in which it could compromise structural integrity or otherwise endanger the safety of the flight, a little time in zero G and a few bruised knees would be pretty reasonable.
For example, the current generation of both Boeing and Airbus aircraft will not, I believe, allow the pilot to stall the aircraft (go so slow as to cause the wings to not have lift and the plane start to fly like bricks do). If the aircraft detected a sudden drop in airspeed that persisted for too long to be an internal glitch, I believe the aircraft will dive and increase thrust to avoid the stall. That may even be what happened here. Similarly, most modern aircraft I believe won't let you go above the speed at which the plane would break apart.
Whether the human is in or out of the loop in various actions is a tough question. In general, these features appear to be significantly increasing aircraft safety.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, airplane components are tested (privately with confidential results of course) to ensure that nothing "wireless" will interfere with the devices. Needless to say, nothing wireless does interfere with the devices, and neither do things such as voltage issues or sudden electric surges. Remember, they protect airplanes from lighting strikes on the outside best they can and inside from sudden surges on their own, as well.
If Qantas manages to have a plane interfered with via either RF or Bluetooth, then they obviously need to come up with a better excuse next time. Maybe terrorism!
Re:Shhh... Don't tell the terrorists (Score:3, Informative)
That liquid bomb plot was complete BS.
"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time," says Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray [craigmurray.org.uk]
None of the alleged terrorists were convicted of trying to blow up an airplane. It is kind of hard to blow up a trans-atlantic flight when you don't have a passport.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7605583.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Cantenna (Score:3, Informative)
A simple directional antenna operating at a few watts from the ground could expose the avionics to many times more RF energy than these low-power devices inside the aircraft.
In other words, if this was really due to RF, then terrorists would be dropping planes out of the sky on a daily basis with $50 worth of equipment and a Pringles can.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
The fly by was switched to a different runway minutes before it was due to take place, the pilot reduced engine thrust to idle and descended the plane below the height of surrounding obstacles. He then attempted to apply thrust too late, and even modern jet engines cannot come up from idle to TOGA (take off, go around) thrust instantly, so he was caught out by the several second lag between the thrust level he was at and the thrust level he wanted.
On the difference between Airbus and Boeing, both have alpha floor protection, which means both aircraft will take action to stave off a stall.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:5, Informative)
The article is clear -- Qantas never claimed a laptop or electrical device had anything to do with it. The ATSB (the Australian equivalent of the NTSB) is the one being quoted about uncommanded movements.
I fly that route regularly (and have been on QF72 twice in the past few months), and clear air turbulence is not uncommon. The sky can be completely clear and then bang - your lunch is all over you. When all is said and done it would not surprise me in the least if they just hit an air pocket.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
I sincerely hope GPS isn't being used for primary altimetry:
http://gpsinformation.net/main/altitude.htm [gpsinformation.net], emphasis mine
Air pressure altimeters are accurate, stable, and perfectly standardized by aviation processes and regulation. I have grave doubts that any aircraft primary avionics suite would ever be fielded that puts GPS altimetry above that.
Re:I *hate* this discussion (Score:4, Informative)
firstly, no. It's not a crappy ECG platform. What do you think a *good* ECG platform is? Do you have *any* experience of them?
For the record, I'm talking about a pretty much top-of-the-line machine such as this:
http://www.schiller.ch/Products/Resting_ECG/New:_CARDIOVIT_CS-200_Excellence/-45-962-224-en-hq-/cms.html [schiller.ch] These are about as good as they get, and this is one of the industry-standard tools that is used (in my case) to develop drugs for a major global pharma company in Phase 1 clinical trials. These are about as accurate as they get, have amongst the highest sampling rate, and record full uncompressed electronic ECGs. And yes, I have been responsible for selecting these devices in conjunction with a team of world-reknowned cardiologists. Sorry we forgot to include you in those discussions, we'll know for next time.
Second, "The Quantas incident is nothing more than pilot error or incompetence" Again, you do not know that to be a fact. You are speculating. Sure, you may be right, but the FAA/CAA isn't going to take a post on /. as gospel. If someone wants to spend enormous sums of money testing, say, an inflight micro GSM cell for mobile phone usage, then sure: they'll review the evidence and make a ruling. They won't just say "we don't think it's true, so go ahead".
I'd consider these points self evident with just a moment of thinking about it.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, they test a wide range of frequencies and devices. Any device irregardless of broadcast strength and frequency is not going to affect an electrical connection, pretty much guaranteed. There are electrical standards for this, and they are very detailed. The FAA doesn't fuck around with this stuff, as much as airline corporations do however.
Planes are not sensitive like they "used to be". People learned from those errors in about 2 years. It's been what, 35+?
Nothing is banned, because you cannot control devices coming on or off a plane. Screeners are trained to look for bombing/hostile devices, but ordinary electronics are not banned nor can realistically be controlled. So don't make shit up. A radio frequency could certainly disrupt the communications with other pilots or theoretically disrupt radar, but the latter has been compensated for and I'm sure the former can be as well.
Example: if you have your cd player in your bag during takeoff, they aren't going to know or stop you because they won't even see it. Is the plane going to crash? Well, you tell me. As an individual example, I've been flying for 20 years doing as such, and I haven't heard pilots complaining of malfunctions or "OMG TURN THAT OFF" either.
True story (Score:5, Informative)
My dad was an Air Traffic Controller and casual pilot for many years and now works for the FAA. I asked him this question, "can cellphones really interfere with a plane's instruments", just a few years ago. He told me this story.
He was sitting in a 20-something-seater puddle jumper waiting to taxi out to the runway. The attendant had gone through all of the necessary checks, did the "turn off your portable electronic devices" speech, sat down, and buckled in. They all waited.
A minute or two later, the captain came on over the PA and said: "Hey folks, it looks like we've got someone with a cellphone still on -- can the men check their briefcases and the ladies check their purses and make sure yours is turned off, please? We can't taxi out until they're all off." There was a bit of fumbling as people checked, then more waiting.
The captain came on again: "Folks, I appreciate your patience, but it looks like we may have to deplane if we can't find that cell phone. Can everyone check one more time, please? Your phones need to be completely off, not just in standby mode." Again, there was much fumbling. This time, it was only a few seconds before the captain came back on. "There we go. Thanks everyone, that did it."
The rest of the flight was uneventful, but my dad waited to be the last to deplane and then stopped to chat with the captain. He explained who he was and then asked, basically, if that was for real. The captain gestured to his copilot and said "watch this -- mine doesn't do it, but his does".
The copilot pulled out his cellphone and turned it on. After a few seconds, several of the displays on the instrument panel started to twitch and do loopy things. The copilot switched the phone back off and everything went back to normal.
Long story short (too late!), it may be the case with larger and newer aircraft that the instruments are shielded well enough so that the EM interference isn't an issue. But with at least some aircraft, it apparently is.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously you are not talking about the new Boeing 787: the first fully-electric civil aircraft. Further, AFAIK 767 and/or 777 do fly by wire as well.
Airbus was the first one to do fly by wire in the civil field, and for that reason has become the focus of bad press. But today's Boeing's are similar in that way.
Anyway, fly by wire is the way to go. It has specific problems, but the old methods do have their ones as well, and has demonstrated that the operation costs get lower.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:3, Informative)
My Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard combo isn't RF, it's infrared, the same as a TV remote. There's no way it could interfere with an airplane's electronics.
A cell phone, now, perhaps. When I watch TV I can tell someone's phone is going to ring a good three seconds before it goes off, because the TV picks up the signal.
The crash you mention (Score:5, Informative)
Airbus will not "take over", but it will clamp what it sees as out-of-range inputs.
The crash you are thinking of it the Habsheim one, where Airbus was doing a very low, slow pass in front of the crowd over a runway that was actually too short for it to use. The pilot was actually using the behaviour you describe: he had told the plane to go very slow and was depending on the software to keep it above stalling speed - which it did. But he was flying below tree height - and the software could not see the trees. The pilot forgot that the engines take 10 seconds to spool up from the low power used in near-stall to enough power to climb above the trees. So when he ordered climb power and nose up, the software refused to try to climb until the engines were delivering enough power to do so safely. Unfortunately, by this time the aircraft had hit the trees.
Basically, the pilot had flown into a very wide, shallow hole, and didn't have the power to climb out. A classic case of software-induced complacency. The software performed exactly according to the spec. Whether the spec was right is another question.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:5, Informative)
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_flight_control_systems [wikipedia.org]
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:3, Informative)
I am a pilot of a private aircraft and I fly with my iphone turned on (I forget to turn it off).
When I am below about 3000 feet, the iphone trys to connect to the towers.. I can hear very lound clicking noises on my radio when it does this.
My old cellphone was not as bad, but the iphone with all it's wireless goodness really interferes sometimes and I have to shut it off
It could very well interfere with the nav radios and give the autopilot false readings - more likley on a small plane with only one radio, the large commercial's have 3-4 radios as backup
Imagine the noise on the radio with 250++ passengers on board playing around with their laptops/cellphones/etc
Food for thought
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
The truth behind the pre-takeoff safety briefs (Score:5, Informative)
I was on a Quantas flight to Australia in 2004, and the security announcements were refreshingly straightforward. None of the American nonsense scripts that have nothing to do with reality.
Here are some of the things they said:
- Turn your stuff off. It won't crash the plane, it just distracts you from the safety brief.
- Your cell phones might just work in the air. And no, they probably won't crash the plane. Even pilots have been known to make a call or two before landing. But it confuses the heck out of the cell towers, and wastes your battery trying to figure out which one to talk to. So shut it off, thanks.
- Leave your stuff behind if we evacuate. You don't want your neighbor scrambling for his stuff and keeping you from getting out of the airplane, do you?
- If those yellow masks drop down, it's because we lost cabin pressure. If that happens, you have something like 10 seconds before you pass out from lack of oxygen. Now, what makes more sense: try to get the mask on your panicky kid as you both pass out, or put it on yourself FIRST, and being awake to help your kid?
- Wear your seat belts. All the time. Almost every day, some plane somewhere hits an unexpected wind gust, and we really don't want to wipe your blood off the overhead bins, thanks.
Very refreshing, and I've never forgotten the reality behind the script.
A blast from the past (Score:1, Informative)
That liquid bomb plot was complete BS.
"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time," says Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray [craigmurray.org.uk]
In A.D. 1994, war was beginning: [wikipedia.org]
In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul.
The two had already converted fourteen bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef had taped to the arch of his foot a metal rod, which would serve as a detonator. The two wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. To support their claim that they were meeting women, they packed condoms in their bags.
[...]
On December 1, Shah placed a bomb under a seat in the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila to test what would happen if a bomb exploded under an airline seat. The bomb went off, injuring several patrons.
On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of an aircraft. He left it inside the life jacket under his seat (26 K) and got off the plane when it arrived in Cebu. Yousef had boarded the flight under the assumed name of Armaldo Forlani, using a false Italian passport. The aircraft was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 on a Manila to Narita route, stopping partway at Cebu. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft. The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Minami Daito Island, near Okinawa, Japan. A Japanese businessman named Haruki Ikegami was killed after the bomb detonated. The Boeing 747-200 safely made an emergency landing in Naha, Okinawa. None of the aircraft's other 272 passengers or any members of the crew were killed, although 10 passengers in front of Ikegami were injured. Yousef then planned which flights to attack for Phase I.
For people who claim to be technical-minded, Slashdotters are remarkably ignorant of the effective use of technology.
The idea of using liquid explosives is not to set up a chemistry lab on the plane, but to smuggle the explosive on board more easily. The biggest problem with bombing a plane has always been the explosive itself. A detonator (and timer, if desired) is easy to conceal on its own, but the explosive is somewhat more difficult. Storing the explosive shared among several bottles and assembling the bomb on board is a quite effective strategy.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:3, Informative)
Specification on the wireless mouse (Score:2, Informative)
Since I'm a EE doing industrial controls. I decide to do a quick check on the wireless laser mouse from Logitech I take with me everywhere.
I found the compliance certificate for the mentioned 2.4 GHz cordless mouse to be certified by the test result done by one MET laboratories, Inc. out of Baltimore, MD.
Based on the certificate, my wireless mouse put out 0.00016 Watts, in the frequency range of 2402.0-2479.0 MHz, with a frequency Tolerance of 66.0 PM. The FCC Emission Designator is 750KF1D (you probably knows which model I have by now). It also says that the mouse confirms to the CFR title 47, FCC part 15C rule for the low power transceiver. Oh did I mention it is also UL listed?
Based on my understanding the electrical equipments were sent to the lab, put in a faraday cage, and measure the amount of EMR they produced, as a stand-alone package (with everything assembled). I don't think the rules has changed that much through out the time. I sincerely doubt a 0.00016 watts of emission is going to have any chance of causing ANY interference on a typical wires. A wire with even the minimum amount of shielding (can be achieved by a very thin layer of grounded metallic shield over the insulators) would guarenteed that the mouse mentioned above would be in no way, shape, or form, cause any interference to be concerned of.
Run another check on the power rating of the device. It is rated to use 3V, 100mA power. So even if my mouse went bezerk and somehow using all the power to transmitt the radio frequency on its transceiver it would still produce a maximum of .3 watts (at a voltage of mere 3 volts), it still could not induce enough power to effect the signals on any hard-wired controls.
In the past I have seen a bundled 110 VAC wires inducing 12VAC on a pair of unpowered wires in the same cable way (they are wired to something but the power was killed). But at 3 volts DC it is far too low on the voltage level to induce anything significant to a hardwire controls that was supposed to have a lot higher voltage on the signals than the wireless mouse. Hopefully that was enough to debunk the "fly-by-mouse" theory.
Re:Let them blame it on the customers... (Score:2, Informative)
A quick search of the ASRS Database [nasa.gov] (the database of US aviation incident reporting) shows hundreds of instances of people (aviation employees who are totally unaware of the scientific method) blaming all sorts of issues on passenger electronic devices. Every time there is anything that has gone wrong, plus they are able to find a random electronic device on, it must be the fault of the device. I suggest that you can *always* find some electronic device that is on.
Re:A blast from the past (Score:2, Informative)
Except that the whole idea of the "can't bring a bottle of water" through security is because the terrorists were using magical liquid explosives that can't be detected.
nitroglycerin is a standard nitrogen explosive and hence detected by standard detectors. And one would hope the plan to stop the terrorists didn't involve the security people throwing containers of nitroglycerin into bins in a crowded security bottleneck.
Re:The crash you mention (Score:1, Informative)
I heard from a current airbus pilot that the problem was an issue of modes.
For a touch and go landing, the pilot put the plane in "landing mode", so he gunned the throttle and the autopilot pushed the nose down to continue landing. He pulled back on the joystick (no flight yokes) and the autopilot cut the power...
Solution was to put the autopilot back into "takeoff mode" but for a traditional pilot this isn't exactly obvious. But I am posting AC, so what do I know...
Re:The crash you mention (Score:3, Informative)
But he was flying below tree height - and the software could not see the trees. The pilot forgot that the engines take 10 seconds to spool up from the low power used in near-stall to enough power to climb above the trees. So when he ordered climb power and nose up, the software refused to try to climb until the engines were delivering enough power to do so safely. Unfortunately, by this time the aircraft had hit the trees.
[...]A classic case of software-induced complacency. The software performed exactly according to the spec.
there were several other factors iirc - one was that because the plane was under 200ft, the software was assumed he was trying to land and did a few things against the pilot (although I can't recall exactly what right now).
The other more important one is that the pilots did not have adequate training about what the software would or would not do in all situations, so it wasn't simply a case of the pilot "forgetting" things.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Turbulence makes planes fall down like that. Not nose-dives. My source on this is a 747 pilot btw
The elevator ***easily*** has enough authority to generate negative G's. If there were an uncommanded nose down input at cruise you could easily float pax and crew. Let me repeat - easily.
Your friend's 747 has cables that drive servos that drive flight controls. Standard stuff.
The A330 is pure fly-by-wire - there is no mechanical connection between the stick and the elevator. The stick or autopilot tell the computers what you want the aircraft (not controls) to do, and the computers then command the flight controls accordingly. The million dollar question would be why the computers would make an uncommanded move, or if they even did. If an autopilot is using elevator to compensate for a mistrimmed stabilizer, disconnecting the autopilot can lead to a pitch up or pitch down event. The A330 is supposed to autotrim the stabilizer, but something obviously went wrong somewhere.
The lack of mechanical connection between the stick and control surfaces means you're relying on the computers (five specific ones to be exact). Anything that calls the trustworthiness of the computers into doubt is a big deal. There was a healthy of skepticism among pilots about fly-by-wire when it first hit commercial aircraft (see if you can guess it's nickname), but it has worked well for years.
Re:Moral of the story? (Score:2, Informative)