Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

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.

[...]

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