Qantas Blames Wireless For Aircraft Incidents

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."

Moral of the story?

Fly Boeing instead of Airbus.

If Airbus is that susceptible to electronic interference, then I'd rather not fly in their planes. The last thing I need is to plunge into the Atlantic because some disgruntled-fellow-gone-terrorist on the ground is jamming the flight controls with a generator and a pringles can.

Re:Moral of the story?

I really doubt the cause was really EMI from any passenger's gadgets. I mean, airport security confiscates liquids for fear someone might manage to cook up composite explosives by stirring fluids together for a few hours, all while keeping the concoction cooled and not being noticed. They're that paranoid, and I'm supposed to believe they let people on board with gear that can interfere with the steering of the plane? Please.

Re:Moral of the story?

You are assuming that airport security is competent and doing something related to real security rather than performing meaningless security theater to calm the crowds.

Re:Moral of the story?

You're right. Banning liquids is moronic! This is a complete security theater right there. If only they'd do something about the real threats, like clothes. You can easily use trousers, a shirt or a bra to choke someone to death (thongs are best for this). Clothes are a serious security threat. I won't feel safe until the TSA bans all clothing articles.

Re:Moral of the story?

Just prey to GOD you're not in seat 32A, with a fatty in 32B and C.

Or even worse, you're in 32B and the fatty is in 32A and 32C

Re:Moral of the story?

1) Soon in your favourite airport :P
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_flight_control_systems [wikipedia.org]

Airbus series of airliners used FBW controls beginning with their A320 series. Boeing followed with their 777 and later designs.

Re:Moral of the story?

The folks at Airbus are just dodging blame

Airbus said nothing, it's the airline who is trying to dodge blame here.

Re:Moral of the story?

Yeah. Queue lawsuit from Airbus against Australian Airlines in 3...2...1...

Trying to shift blame when the blame belongs somewhere else is one thing. Trying to shift blame onto the company who supplies you with your airplanes using a moronic excuse is just bad business. You're saying you're moronic enough to buy a plane that can be crashed with a mouse, and that your supplier was moronic enough to build a plane that can be crashed with a mouse. Nothing good is going to come out of this.

Re:Moral of the story?

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:Moral of the story?

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:Moral of the story?

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.

Re:Moral of the story?

Another reason to keep devices off is so you're concentrating on the announcements that are made, if something goes wrong and everyone needs to get out. This applies in particular to any operations on or near the ground, but not as much while at flight level.

WTF?

If an airplane can have its control mechanisms interfered with by a simple wireless device then what the hell are they thinking?

Shield that crap.

If it is that delicate then don't use it - there are surely alternatives and surely my life should not depend on something so likely trivial.

It could be said that, "Yeah, they cause problems and in the interest of safety we're going to ban them." Bullshit. That treats the symptom and is not a cure.

Re:WTF?

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:WTF?

Even if you're right(I don't know shit about this stuff), the issue then becomes the software.

If the plane descended so abruptly that it caused 70 injuries, then the software is to blame for not limiting ascent and descent in a more controlled manner.

When a human pilot sees they're at 30k feet and wants to be at 12k feet, they do not plunge the plane into a nose dive.

Re:WTF?

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.

Dear editors...

...both links go to the same page. What is your problem with actually doing some basic checking, like following the links?

Channel Reuse & Interference

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:Channel Reuse & Interference

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.

No. This has nothing to do with "I want to use my laptop/DS/phone, so make me happy as the paying customer", and everything to do with "if an unauthorized wireless mouse can bring down a plane, we need the entire fleet of such badly defective planes grounded and fixed yesterday".

Seriously. Any system that can't deal with weak RF interference needs to hit the scrapheap. In any other industry, we'd see the customers suing - Imagine if Ford said using a bluetooth headset in their vehicles violates your warranty... They'd go bankrupt overnight. Only the fact that the aviation industry has slowly boiled the frog, making us expect horrible customer service at unpredictable (but high) prices, allows any of the BS we've put up with for the past 20 years (and the shout-and-taze squads aside, the airlines had problems long before 9/11).

Not the right reason to worry.

"I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."
Flown? No. Crashed? Maybe.

Fixed that for you.

Mythbusters

I would say this claim by Qantas is highly suspect. The mythbusters did a special to debunk the myth of wireless device interference. Ostensibly, Airbus uses some form of protection for their avionics. If not, as others are sure to say, fly Boeing! A wireless mouse uses a very, very low transmission power. This is not to say that I am in favor of cell phones on planes. If you are going to be crammed into a hollow tube, the last thing you want to hear is someone yaking on their cell phone while sitting in a seat with a cushion so thin that you are really sitting on the seat frame.

Proof?

Until they backup their accusations, its just an attempt to divert responsibility instead of saying "Oops, we messed up".

If it is a fact that a common wireless communication device can cause this sort of issue - why do they not have policies and procedures in place to prevent it? I'd say all blame still lands squarely on their shoulder - if some tool with a bluetooth headset can bring the plane I'm riding on down, you better believe I'm placing my faith in the airline that they take necessary measures to ensure that isn't possible.

Seems a lot more likely they slipped on their maintenance schedule however and a component in the plane failed, simplest answer is often the correct one.

Unlikely

The FAA has an advisory on PEDs (personal electronics devices) called AC 91.21.1b where they suggest that carriers set their own standards as to what PEDs are allowed and which are not. This applies to US planes only, but I mention it as a point of comparison.

Whenever you read incidents of PEDs interfering with aircraft, it's important to note that they're pretty much all anecdotal. There's a story from 15 years ago where a pilot claimed that a laptop being turned on and off would toggle the autopilot disconnect, for instance, but when the airline purchased that exact laptop from the passenger and tried reproducing it on the same route at the same location and altitude, they were unable.

Modern avionics are not very susceptible to interference like this. Qantas may have chosen this explanation at this point for the same reason that a software developer might claim 'alpha bit decay' (or cosmic rays) was responsible for an unreproducible software crash. No confirmation is guaranteed, and a negative result during a test doesn't prove that the theory is wrong.

For my background, I've developed software, built programmable electronics, and installed avionics in aircraft. I don't claim to be an expert, but I've got a 'Bravo Sierra' alarm that's going off when I read this story.

Sounds like bullshit to me...

How the hell can a *wireless mouse* affect the elevator controls of an aircraft? Are they somehow about a trillion times more susceptible to interference than the electronics in cars? Let's think logically about this for a fucking minute...

You can use a mobile phone in a car, which has damn near every function controlled by some sort of electronics (well, if it was built within the last ten years). Despite this, cars don't routinely have all sorts of weirdass control failures caused by people talking on mobile phones, which may be using an output power of up to a few hundred milliwatts. They are *sometimes* affected by massive sources of very very loud RF, like military RADAR systems - there's a spot of German autobahn known for cars having mysterious electrical failures which clear up when the car is towed a kilometer down the road. No surprises here, there's a big RADAR installation *right by the road*.

"But it's a wireless mouse, using bluetooth!" - okay, so that means it's on 2.4GHz. Fire up your laptop in the car. Weird electrical problems? Nope. Nothing. Right there you're using about 50mW of 2.4GHz RF, maybe up to 100mW depending on the card and local telecoms regulations. Get your bluetooth mouse out. Anything? Probably not - since they transmit in the order of a handful of *microwatts* of RF.

Okay, let's look at the plane - I wonder if it's got any sort of digital radio transmitter on it? Oh, look, a transponder, and that puts out somewhere between 100W and 500W depending on the type. Ah yes, and an ACARS transmitter with at least 5W, possibly as much as 25W, again depending on the type...

So, what are you saying here? Do you seriously expect me to believe that a wireless mouse operating in the microwatt range can affect the avionics of an aircraft, but *somehow* the aircraft's own very high power radio transmitters don't? There's probably more stray RF at 2.4GHz from the galley microwave.

Saying that it was caused by a wireless mouse is unquestionably bollocks.

Re:Wireless?

In all honesty, can someone please explain how this could even remotely be true? Aren't these planes flying around at all altitudes with a multitude of radio wave radiation from an untold number of sources, both human and naturally occurring?

Design flaw. Not saying that's how it is, but it doesn't seem impossible that this plane was poorly designed.

A more likely possibility: the plane failed randomly, and scapegoating something was a more attractive alternative than saying "we have no idea why our plane failed, it could be anything really, maybe they all will fall."