Word: flighting
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...French team leading the investigation into the Air France Flight 447 crash works through the multitude of likely and less likely disaster scenarios - from the repercussions of stormy conditions to an act of terrorism - perhaps among the most difficult to assess will be possible flight computer malfunctions. Air France CEO Pierre-Henry Gourgeon noted on Monday that immediately preceding AF447's disappearance, automatic messages sent by the plane indicated "multiple technical failures." As details emerge regarding these messages, experts will struggle to understand whether they were the inevitable result of the plane's breaking up or indicators of the failures...
...immediately prior to the crash. A chronology of these messages acquired by the São Paolo daily Jornal da Tarde show that moments before the plane is believed to have plunged into the ocean, its autopilot became disengaged and the plane sustained damage to its stabilizing controls and flight systems, as well as a failure of the systems that were monitoring the aircraft's speed, altitude and direction: the ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Units) and the ISIS (Integrated Standby Instruments System). These are key components in fly-by-wire systems, which use computers and wires instead of mechanics...
...AF447 - unexpectedly went into a brief yet harrowing 20-second nosedive, causing multiple injuries and requiring an emergency landing. The investigation that followed blamed an ADIRU failure for the 330's uncommanded dive: one of the plane's three ADIRUs, which are designed to help the plane's flight-control computer fly the plane safely, began sending erroneous data spikes to the flight-control computer. Instead of deferring to the information of the two functioning ADIRUs as it normally should, the computer acted on the false data and sharply altered the plane's course, with near disastrous results...
...ADIRU failures. An Airworthiness Directive issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration last year warned airlines of instances of failure in ADIRUs aboard Airbus 319, 320 and 321 models that "could result in loss of one source of critical altitude and airspeed data and reduce the ability of the flight crew to control the airplane." Dubon says these issues are "totally unrelated ... Our safety people have informed me that is not relevant to either the Qantas case or the Air France case...
Aviation authorities around the world have ordered inspections and procedures to try to eliminate the problem. "In these fly-by-wire systems, one never really knows if one has checked out all possible combinations of events to make sure that the computer properly reacts," Weber says of modern flight control. Fly-by-wire systems use computers and wires instead of mechanics and hydraulics to control a plane's flight. Electronic systems are more reliable than mechanical processes but are prone to software errors that can't always be anticipated. "There could be some other sequence of events that could cause...