Computers Key To Air France Crash 911
Michael_Curator writes "It's no secret that commercial airplanes are heavily computerized, but as the mystery of Air France Flight 447 unfolds, we need to come to grips with the fact that in many cases, airline pilots' hands are tied when it comes to responding effectively to an emergency situation. Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw — it's a philosophical divide. It's essentially a question of what do you trust most: a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information. It's not surprising that an American company errs on the side of individual freedom while a European company is more inclined to favor an approach that relies on systems. As passengers, we should have the right to ask whether we're putting our lives in the hands of a computer rather than the battle-tested pilot sitting up front, and we should have right to deplane if we don't like the answer."
What's the average salary of an airplane pilot? (Score:1, Interesting)
A new pilot, working for a regional airline, starts at around $15,000 per year. Working for a national or international carrier, they might make twice that. Think about that next time you board a plane, rather than worrying about the computer.
Re:What the heck is 'battle tested' supposed to me (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the answer is statistics. What's safer and more reliable in the long run? How many crashes have we had due to computer error rather than human error given x hours flown by each?
Statistics is only the answer if it measures the right thing. At a minimum your suggestion doesn't qualify because computers fly planes on autopilot almost all of the time anyway. Sure there are better statistics to be looking at, I can think of a few myself off the cuff, but better than junk doesn't mean good or useful.
So beware the fallacy that we do know the answer, it may ultimately be that we are simply incapable of measuring the correct variables to make a mathematically sound evaluation.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, not making stupid, well-known mistakes, is something computers are really good at.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:2, Interesting)
How does a pilot get 'battle-tested' if he only spends his time in a largely computer-controlled plane?
Simulators won't help (because you can run the computer system attached to the simulator 24/7/365 to see how it deals with any problems you can throw at a pilot in it)?
Re:What the heck is 'battle tested' supposed to me (Score:5, Interesting)
It was really something, a view like you would not believe, and if we had not been doing our figure-8s over something that impressive, I would have been really pissed, because my tummy was also doing figure-8s.
Compare the numbers... (Score:3, Interesting)
...of crashes due to computer error and pilot errors in crashes covered in episodes of Air Crash Investigations (Mayday).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes [wikipedia.org]
Hint: There were no crashes due to computer error.
Re:Give the pilot control! (Score:2, Interesting)
You're joking, right?
A very similar incident to the Gimli Glider did happen. I'd refer you to Air Transat flight 236, an Airbus A330 that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean and glided to a successful landing at Lajes Air Force Base in the Azores.
And Flight 1549? That was an Airbus A320.
As to your last statement, if you understand the Airbus flight control laws you'll know that with the landing gear down in that type of situation, you'll be in direct law, which does not modify any pilot control inputs before being sent to the flight controls. Even if it had degraded all the way to mechanical backup (none of the 5 computers operational), you'd still have the use of pitch trim and rudder.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:5, Interesting)
From everything I've read the landing in the hudson seems like a fluke. Apparently landing in water is far more dangerous than landing on land. Granted, with lots of buildings all around him I'm not sure the pilot had a lot of options.
I did take some exception to the term "battle-hardened" - a fair percentage of pilots who go through serious air emergencies end up dead, and since so few emergencies happen few pilots are experienced with them. On the other hand, the flight computer has the experience of every simulated and real emergency any plane has ever been through. Sure, humans can practice in the simulator as well, but the reality is that costs mean that no individual gets that much time in the simulator. Due to the magic of software when one flight computer knows how to handle some situation, they all do.
I suspect the Boeing design reflects the American legal system. If the plane goes down and it is the pilot's fault, you can sue the pilot. Maybe you can even sue the airline who trained him. On the other hand, if the plane goes down and the pilot had no control then you can sue the aircraft manufacturer. Never mind that the design saves lives - better to allow thousands to die at somebody else's hands than one to die at your own. Gotta love the tort system.
For the same reason we'll allow tens of thousands to die every year in auto accidents due to driver error but we'd never consider automating driving because maybe somebody might die every year or two due to a computer error.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Gosh, that was such a terribly worded article summary I can't decide if the author is a regular 'editor' of /. or just a typical reflection of the poor taste and low competence of the /. editors. Would you prefer one lump of incompetence or two with your /. articles?
Anyway, I'd hate to generalize from my poor abilities as a former pilot, but I tend to favor machines over humans. As Einstein noted, there are no limits to human stupidity, but you can design any degree of redundancy you want into mechanical systems. The simple question is cost versus probabilistic safety.
As should be expected from /., the treatment of the design trade-off in the article summary was amazingly shallow. In extreme cases, the designers create planes that cannot possibly be flown by humans. Such fly-by-wire planes may involve control optimization with negative dynamic stability and feedback loops that can only be satisfied at computer speeds. In particular I'm thinking of a fairly recent jet fighter that had to have PROPER corrective feedback something like every tenth of a second.
As regards the storm, I actually came close to getting killed when something like that caught me off guard. Scaling those possibilities up... Well, that's a big chunk of the reason I mostly avoid flying these years.
With regards to planes, my fuzzy recollection is that the DC-10 had the worst safety record for commercial airplanes. However, every time I look at a 747 it boggles my imagination that the thing can fly. Continuing with Airbus, I remember an interesting crash in Nagoya a few years ago that involved the pilots essentially getting into an argument with the fly-by-wire system...
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:4, Interesting)
you can thank all the shitty pilots in the US airways on the breaking of the pilots union.
that union had some STANDARDS for who they would let fly.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:4, Interesting)
That's pretty much what Boeing has done. The computers can fly the planes all day long. When something isn't right, the pilot can override the system simply by flying the plane like normal.
Now with the terrain following radar, this isn't a situation a pilot would be wanting to override the computer on. well, unless the plane nose dives and the computer proves/indicates it is unreliable. Then you have a choice, let the computer crash you or let the pilot attempt to not crash you. Only with Boeing is that possible, with airbus, regardless of the situation, the computer takes precedence.
A well trained pilot would know when to trust the computers and when not to. They would also know how to maneuver and react in situations. It's like the pilot that landed his plane in the river after losing an engine to birds. I don't think a computer would have taken that option and not only would it have been likely that all the passengers would have been killed, but bystanders as the planes computer attempted to correct and eventually goes down in a populated street.
Re:Pick your poison (Score:3, Interesting)
On top of that (Score:5, Interesting)
what people are forgetting is that the airbus plane DID return nearly full control to the pilot (nearly because there are still limits to things like how much roll one can request, but these COULD be built in mechanically in the absence of fly-by-wire).
The real issue here is that the computer system detected invalid input and handed the control back to the pilots (under "alternate law" which means most safety rules are disabled), but the pilots may not have had enough information to know whether the control was handed back to them in a safe state, and if not, how to correct.
On top of that, the airplane was flying fairly close to the coffin corner (where the airplane is capable of going too fast and too slow simultaneously, and at this point, in this situation, computers are really helpful). One possible issue is that a gust of wind could have caused "mach tucks" if they were going a little too fast (thus causing downward pressure on the nose during gusts). These could have placed significant stress on the airframe until things started to fail. I have some other theories and observations about debris and ACARS messages, but this isn't the time for that now. All I will say is that all indications are the airplane was flying too fast, and there is NO indication that the instructions Airbus has sent to pilots will remedy that problem because it is unlikely that the pilots would have had sufficient information to act on them.
There are two issues involved here that need additional discussion though:
1) Are airplanes built to withstand forces as well as they used to be? Would, say, a DC8 be able to withstand more turbulance than an A330?
2) Do FBW systems provide sufficient feedback for a pilot to feel the plane? Could accidents be avoided in cases like this by adding additional feedback?
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Second paragraph: "It's been well established that Air France Flight 447 went down because on-board computers received conflicting information from sensors on the outside of the plane." Does this come from CNN or the wild speculation on airliners.net? It certainly doesn't come from accident investigators, who really have no idea yet what happened. What was cause and what was effect has not been at all established.
As to the point: Airbus does have alternate laws and direct law, when situations warrant it. Basically the logic, reading the technical briefs linked off airliners.net, is that if the computer isn't sure what's going on, it puts up big warning signs telling the pilot they're in control. Depending on what sensors and information is missing or contradictory, different protections get disabled, with corresponding indicators displaying warnings. It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a way to override the systems in the first place and place the plane into alternate or direct laws. The author quotes no technical documentation whatsoever and just says "Boeing" and "Airbus" which is a ridiculously broad brush.
The blogger is, in short, presenting wild speculation and misleading generalizations as fact, and rewarded by the /. community with healthy ad revenue and page views.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:3, Interesting)
My step-brother is a commercial pilot (mostly small hop, but working his way up to big jets), he never was a military pilot (though he was military), but he also didn't hop into piloting a jet straight from a sim either. He had to have a huge amount of actual flight hours before they even let him into a cockpit of a commercial jet. And another largish number of hours before they'd let him co-pilot. Etc..
People flying large passenger jets are skilled and experienced, military or not.
Actually, when everyone was worshiping that guy who crash-landed a jet into a river (Tully? Sully?), I was wondering what the hell the big deal was. I find it odd that our expectations are so low that we merely brand competence and doing your job well as heroism. I would expect most pilots of large passenger jets to be up to similar feats. If they aren't, I'm very scared.
But last time I checked, most commercial airline crashes were due to technical problems, and not pilot error.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:3, Interesting)
For the same reason we'll allow tens of thousands to die every year in auto accidents due to driver error but we'd never consider automating driving because maybe somebody might die every year or two due to a computer error.
Oh, bull. No-one has seriously considered automated driving anywhere you'd see it in a consumer environment because it's a lot harder than it sounds, harder than automated flying, harder than automated trains, harder than automated sailing, etc.
Hell, there's a reason we have the DARPA Grand Challenge [wikipedia.org]. Even worse, considering the number of cars on the road, even with a perfect mesh network between them all (you'd have to retrofit the 100s of millions of older cars too) it'd be more complicated than even the terrain issues the DARPA challenge deals with (and their urban challenge didn't touch on the kind of obstacles and traffic that a major US city has
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:0, Interesting)
The plane Sully was fliying was also an Airbus. I would go so far as to say that the computers on that aircraft saved it. Looking at the radar data, he lost 40 knots and 300 feet in under a minute, suggesting that the plane stalled. See the flight 3407 reconstructions to see how fast a stall/spin can occur, especially when there is no FBW involved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxywEE1kK6I
Now boeing aircraft have the same protection, but there was no need for pilot corrections
Now even after the stall, Sully had enough energy to make it teterboro, there was no need for a ditching. I would argue that a computer is in a better position to figure that out than overworked human.
something interesting about the airbus (Score:4, Interesting)
it's all electronic control, rather than hydraulic/ pneumatic controls. meaning its more simple, but it's also more rigid: if your computer goes, so goes your aircraft. yeah, they use triple redundant systems, but how many electric surges do you need to take out 3 computer systems in an aluminum tube?
learned from this interesting comment:
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/06/02/world/europe/02plane.html?s=3 [nytimes.com]
Re:Nagoya crash (Score:4, Interesting)
the computer refused to let the pilots power up and climb out at the end of the pass.
Citation needed. Jet Engines are typically slow to respond to power. I can't find any source that indicates it was a computer design flaw, rather than electrical or engine flaw. I've looked for OEB 19/1 "Engine Acceleration Deficiency at Low Altitude," which would be relevant, but is apparently unavailable online.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:2, Interesting)
"Yep. I reckon an American pilot in a Boeing could have just flipped a switch and fixed all that. They'd all be relaxing with cold ones as we speak."
Airbus have a rep for not letting the pilot control the plane or giving back control at the last and worst possible moment. But we don't know if the Brazilian crash has anything to do with this.
I'd like to see a computer know to, and successfully land in the Hudson though!
Re:Experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Humans and computers are both prone to error, and both prone to confusion from conflicting input. Computers are faster at making calculations, and more accurate at doing physics problems - but only if the input is correct. Computers lack human flexibility, adaptability, creativity, and thinking outside the box to solve problems. In normal operations, computers are arguably better at flying airplanes full of people than humans. When things aren't normal, I don't want a computer trying to figure out what to do with an airplane with a missing wing [strangemilitary.com].
I'm a GA pilot and when I'm flying, I'm doing two basic things: 1) flying the airplane 2) keeping an eye out for a place to land if the engine goes out. It might be a field, a road, a lake, or if I'm lucky a runway. It would take millions of dollars of sophisticated equipment to have a computer figure out a place to land when the engine is out. And I'd figure I can do a better job landing in that situation anyways - because the computers tend to get confused when they have no power
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:5, Interesting)
In other fields such as medical diagnosis, allowing doctors to override the algorithm has been shown to decrease overall accuracy. Sure, sometimes they override a computer mistake, but more often they override the truth with their own mistakes: (cite [74.125.155.132])
Re:Nagoya crash (Score:5, Interesting)
It was later shown that FBW was not at fault. The aicraft sunk too fast anyway and by the time the pilots realised it, it was too late.
Jets take a number of seconds to spool up. If yu find a video with sound, you'll notice that the jets spool up just before it hit the trees - some 5s after the pilots commanded them.
AND, there were a bunch of pilot procedural failures at the same time (e.g. never below 100ft AGL), not to mention poor managerial decisions in allowing the flight plan to go ahead in the first place.
Re:Pick your poison (Score:2, Interesting)
I call BS on this post. I know from personal experience that no one gets even a private pilots license without demonstrating multiple times that he can perform the proper response to a stall. I have done it successfully and unsuccessfully (with an instructor along to catch mistakes) and the issue is whether or not you can override the natural instinct in a panic situation where everything inside you is screaming "pull up" or similar completely wrong messages.
On the other hand, I have also had an air traffic controller clear me for solo takeoff on a runway that he had seconds before cleared another pilot to land on from the other direction. This is an obvious error to any pilot when your runway number plus (or minus) 18 equals the other pilots runway number but as an inexperienced pilot I assumed that I had heard something wrong. Fortunately, the other pilot was an experienced CFI and corrected ATC on the problem before it could become life threatening.
Some things are experience. Some things are guts.
Re:What the heck is 'battle tested' supposed to me (Score:5, Interesting)
i read somewhere about a pilot flying an empty cargo plane (large-size jet, iirc) back who put it through a vertical loop (vomit-comet style) just for fun. seriously annoyed the company, as it knocked a few thousand hours off the lifespan of the plane.
Pilots in the airforce do this kind of stuff all the time. My colonel once had a fighter try to steal his landing approach when he was flying an empty cargo plane. Empty those things have tons of lift, so he threw the plane on its side and outturned the fighter to make the landing.
And like those scenes in Top Gun:
When my dad was in Thailand during the Vietnam War, they got a new general in at Kurat AFB, and marshalled the whole base for this formal ceremony. Right in the middle of it, an F-4 pilot buzzed the crowd at a very low altitude (the general on the stage hit the deck). Nobody could figure out who did it ("oh, sorry sir, all the planes were in the hangar that day"), so the guy was never caught. But then again, they didn't try very hard either, since that's the culture in the Air Force.
Internet geeks have questioned Aibus for decades (Score:1, Interesting)
And here you thought the Clarinet posting was going to dredge up old school USENET nostalgia? Check out this gem from the comp.risks digest almost 20 years ago:
Date: Thu, 24 May 90 02:16:38 -0700
From: Nancy Leveson
Subject: A320 again
The 21 May 90 issue of Newsweek has an article on the A320. It gibes with the
rumors I have heard from people in the aircraft industry (although they have
told me about even more suspected control systems problems than are mentioned
in this article).
A Bumpy Ride for the Airbus A320:
Northwest's newest fleet comes under scrutiny
by Annetta Miller with Karen Springen
"It's been one of the more controversial aeronatic introductions since Kitty
Hawk. And last week the highly automated Airbus A320 jetliner bumped up
against still more turbulence. Northwest Airlines, the only U.S. carrier to
operate the planes, acknowledged that it has reported suspected malfunctions of
the aircraft's flight control system to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The reports come on the heels of two overseas crashes involving the $32 million
plane. While both Northwest and the plane's manufacturer say it is safe to
fly, the crashes and the reports to the FAA raise questions about its
reliability -- and the limits of technology. `The controversy is always out
there,' says Edwin Arbon of hte Flight Safety Foundation. `Are we going too
far with automation?'"
"The official cause of both crashes: pilot error. . But some pilots and air-safety
experts wonder whether the plane's autothrust system, which controls
speed, may have contributed to the disasters. They charge that radiation
from power lines and other sources could interfere with the system -- a
serious problem if pilots let their guard down and rely solely on the
computer. Says Ken Plunkett of the Aviation Safety Institute, a nonprofit
research group: `People may be becoming overconfident with the airbus.
They're not [recognizing] its limitations.'"
"Northwest spokesman Doug Miller says passengers have always been safe
on the airline's eight plane A320 fleet. Still, after the Indian
Airlines disaster, Northwest issued a bulletin that alerted pilots
to possible glitches in the plane's cockpit computer. In addition,
the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, Northwest filed 39 FAA `service
difficulty' reports concerning its fleet. While many reports involve
such minor problems as malfunctioning cabin lights, others are more
substantive. In one case, a pilot disconnected the autopilot because
he mistakenly believed he was descending too rapidly."
"Both Northwest and the FAA insist the glitches are typical of new planes.
Northwest's Miller calls the troubles `teething' problems while the FAA's
Mort Edelstein refers to them as `bugs.' Airline officials say those
bugs are well on their way to being eliminated. In fact, they are betting
more than $500 million on the prospect. The airline plans to add 17 other
A320s to its fleet -- and has options to buy 75 more."
Despite my highlighting that one particular section above, I'm not seriously suggesting that this article has bearing on the recent crash. Who knows, maybe it does, but I Am Not An Aerospace Engineer and make no claims. I just find it fascinating that 20 years down the line, we are still arguing about Airbus design philosophy.
Re:Overrides for when computers go mad. (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry to spoil your Airbus prejudices but Flight 1549 was an Airbus A320 and it is flown with fly-by-wire. And judging from what I read it was quite helpfull in that situation.
"According to one person familiar with the investigation, Capt. Sullenberger was able to keep the nose of the plane up while flying at a reduced speed partly because his aircraft's so-called fly-by-wire system used computers to prevent the jetliner from stalling, or becoming uncontrollable and falling out of the air. Preliminary data indicate that these computer-controlled safeguards remained fully operational until touchdown, this person said." - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123241485664396363.html
Re: Mulhouse-Habsheim crash (Score:4, Interesting)
You're remembering the popular media speculation of the time, now turned into myth, which, as is often the case, was completely misinformed. See links posted by myself and others above in this sub-thread.
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that some of the problem is the need to support a mixed environment - what happens if the guy in front of you jams on the brakes or the car in the other lane swerves towards you. If you start with the premise that NOBODY is manually driving a car then you'd have far fewer surprises potentially. Granted, a design that could still handle the unexpected would be a good thing.
For all the money we spend on various government boondoggles I wonder what the ROI would be if we actually decided to implement something like this. Just think of the potential productivity improvements if the US had an automated roadway system. It would revolutionize transportation. You'd need half the cars on the road since the typical family wouldn't need cars parked all over the place since the cars could drive themselves (empty) to wherever they needed to be. Emissions would be cut dramatically since the cars would travel ideal routes at ideal speeds and wouldn't need to stop much (no need for traffic lights - just interleave crossing traffic). No need for huge parking lots taking up lots of space and all the enviornmental problems that causes - just have a parking garage every 2 miles and cars can drop people off at the door and go park. And, how much do all those accidents cost the economy and the health care system?
Many of these benefits wouldn't appear in a mixed enviornment - you can't interleave cars at intersections if you have human drivers. At what point does somebody's desire to "enjoy driving" outweigh the benefits to society if manual driving were restricted to particular venues such as tracks or maybe the odd road through some woods?
Re:On top of that (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of Boeing's military aircraft are tankers and AWACS which are based on their passenger airplanes.
Boeing hasn't built a bomber since 1962 and their only fighters were some prototypes for ATF and JSF programs. Ah, and since they bought McDonnell Douglas in 1997 they also build their fighters.
So no, Boeing knew nothing about fly-by-wire, they were very late to produce a fly-by-wire airplane (Boeing 777 came 7 years later than Airbus A320) and thus, they don't trust it.
Airbus however is a consortium of DASA, Aérospatiale and CASA. Aérospatiale had early experience with fly-by-wire (they built the Concorde).