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Airbus Voting Logic – Part II: Fail-Safe
The statement by, AirBus regarding the robustness of the AirBus AOA voting logic disclosed in the ATSB QF72 accident report raises some interesting questions as to what was actually meant by the term...
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People In Glass Cockpits
Reading the ATSB interim report on the QF72 in flight accident one could easily overlook the statement, "...the crew reported that the (ECAM (1)) messages were constantly scrolling, and they could not...
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The AF 447 TCAS Failure
The BEA interim report on the AF 447 accident confirms that the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) had become inoperative during the early part of the event sequence for an, as yet,...
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The AF 447 Cabin Altitude Change
While some commentators have taken the last message received from AF 447 to indicate that the aircraft had suffered a major structural failure and was decompressing all we really know is that at that...
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The AF 447 Cabin Altitude Change – Pt II
Invalid air data may have triggered the cabin pressure differential safety function on AF 447.
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A Spectre is Haunting Airbus
So far as we know flight AF 447 fell out of the sky with its systems performing as their designers had specified, if not how they expected, right up-to the point that it impacted the surface of the...
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The Airbus Aircraft Family & System Safety
Over the last couple of months I've posted on various incidents involving the Airbus A330 aircraft from the perspective of system safety. As these posts are scattered through my blog I thought I'd pull...
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The ATSB Preliminary QF32 Report
The ATSB release the preliminary report on the QF 32 A380 uncontained engine failure. While the report sheds light on a number of key issues in the investigation and certainly provides a 'smoking gun'...
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Rotor Bursts and Single Point of Failure
It appears that the underlying certification basis for aircraft safety in the event of a intermediate power turbine rotor bursts is not supported by the rotor failure seen on QF 32.
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Rotor bursts and single points of failure (Part II)
A report by the AIA on engine rotor bursts and their expected severity raises questions about the levels of damage sustained by QF 32.
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Averages, Voting and System Robustness
The QF 72 accident illustrates the significant effects that 'small field' decisions can have on overall system safety.
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AF447… What We Now Know
The BEA has released a precis of the data contained on AF447's Flight Data Recorder and we can know look into the cockpit of AF447 in those last terrifying minutes.
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Side Sticks and Shared Situational Awareness
One of the less often considered aspects of situational awareness in the cockpit is the element of knowing what the 'guy in the other seat is doing'. This is a particularly important part of cockpit...
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The Titanic Effect (Part II)
Thinking about the unintentional and contra-indicating stall warning signal of AF 447 I was struck by the common themes between AF 447 and the Titanic. In both the design teams designed a vehicle...
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Pilots in the Loop? Airbus and the FBW Side Stick
Airbuses side stick improves crew comfort and control, but is there a hidden cost? The Airbus FBW side stick flight control has vastly improved the comfort of aircrew flying the Airbus fleet, much as...
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The C* continuum
This post is part of the Airbus aircraft family and system safety thread. While there’s often a lot of discussion about short term response of aircraft to control inputs, in practice it’s often the...
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Another A320 crash
The Germanwings A320 crash At this stage there’s not more that can be said about the particulars of this tragedy that has claimed a 150 lives in a mountainous corner of France. Disturbingly again we...
View ArticleUnreliable airspeed (again)
So here’s a question for the safety engineers at Airbus. Why display unreliable airspeed data if it truly is that unreliable? In slightly longer form. If (for example) air data is so unreliable that...
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