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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday December 27 2018, @08:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the man-versus-machine dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Lion Air Flight 610, which took off from Indonesia on Oct. 29, should have never left the runway. On its previous flight, the aircraft gave incorrect speed and altitude readings.

But it's unclear whether the pilots were even aware that the plane had been malfunctioning. They took off at 6:20 a.m.

They immediately received the first signal that something was wrong: The control column started shaking loudly, warning that the plane was in danger of stalling and could crash.

The plane kept climbing, but the pilots could not figure out the correct altitude or airspeed, asking air traffic control for help. And two critical sensors registered different readings between the pilot and co-pilot.

Then the plane dropped over 700 feet, furthering the confusion inside the cockpit. "An aircraft dipping after takeoff is not normal. It's beyond abnormal. It's unacceptable," said Dennis Tajer, a pilot and spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association.

Something alarming had happened: The aircraft's computer system had forced the plane's nose down. The pilots recovered from the drop, but air traffic control noted they were "experiencing a flight control problem."


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday December 28 2018, @02:44AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday December 28 2018, @02:44AM (#779207) Homepage Journal

    It's been active since 1985 or so.

    It's run out of SRI in Menlo Park, California and moderated by Dr. Peter G. Neumann, who is old enough to have worked on Multics.

    I just had to stop participating as it was making me hide under the bed at night. I'm also deathly afraid of flying now, not because I don't trust Physics or Aerodynamics but because I don't trust Computer Programmers.

    I wrote this about quite a serious industrial accident when my family lived on-base at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California:

    The simple failure to train a test technician set The American Taxpayer back thirty million Simoleons at the very height of the Vietnam War.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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