Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit (dealing with exploded engine) | Hacker News Reader

Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit (dealing with exploded engine)

aerosocietychannel.com

39 pointsdavi16 comments

Site seems dead, Google Cache: http://goo.gl/a216o EDIT: Apparently there are pictures of the cockpit with the error messages etc, text-only doesn't do this article justice.

I think it's just very, very slow to load. It loaded for me about 30 minutes ago, shortly before your comment.

Very interesting.

It's amazing how the pilots can remain calm in such circumstances. I wonder what they told the passengers. "One of our engines blew up and two are not working in full capacity, but don't worry everything is fine".

I would also be interested in knowing why the engine blew up in the first place. Seems to me that the ECAM messages were less than helpful sometimes. Which reminded me of how we approach error reporting in the applications that we develop where we report on individual problems and not necessarily relate that to the overall state of the system.

I wonder what they told the passengers. "One of our engines blew up and two are not working in full capacity, but don't worry everything is fine".

Wonder no longer, there's a video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyEJCg9etBg

"We do apologise. As I'm sure you're aware, we have a technical issue with our number two engine..."

The guy actually did a damn good job of maintaining a calm and reassuring tone; the fact that bits of the engine can be clearly seen sticking through the top of the wing is the only thing that detracts from the everything-is-fine message.

He did a much better job than this other Qantas pilot, dealing with a less serious (though more spectacular-looking) engine failure earlier in the year, who let his own stress show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI_5qDrMuK0

"...as you can imagine things are a little tense in the cockpit... please be assured we are trained for this situation. Of course it's usually in the simulator but we are trained for it..."

Kind of reminds me of how the hostess of a recent flight was telling us how terrible the flight would be. "There's a big storm that we will be flying through. It's going to be a bumpy flight, and we're taking on extra fuel because we might be diverted to another airport. Oh, and I also might have to bump someone off the plane because we're too heavy."

My initial thoughts were: "keep that kind of information to yourself. I don't want to know." It was more like a roller-coaster ride rather a flight so she was right, but i still didn't want to know.

Thanks for posting this @davi. I look forward to reading the full article when it comes back online (the link by @oomkiller is a good start, but I really would like to see the source article).

I don't know about everyone else, but reading about these kinds of incidents from the pilot's perspective makes me more confident about flying, not less. I have zero doubt that those folks are professionals.

It's interesting just how many different systems needed to be considered by the pilots after the incident. I've read articles before about how a pilots routine job can be very boring but it's good to know they have built up all that experience and training for moments like these.

What strikes me is that the software he's talking about appears to be badly designed; or at least, not well designed for this rare situation where you've got dozens of error messages coming up at once and they're not prioritised.

Also,

...once we’d extended the undercarriage using the alternate system we had no indication it was down until we’d gone to the system page to make confirmation of that.

(What, there's no big-ass mechanical dial with "Gear up" and "Gear down" on it?)

and

In the Airbus and the A380 we don’t carry performance and landing charts, we have a performance application. Putting in the ten items affecting landing performance on the initial pass, the computation failed. It gave a message saying it was unable to calculate that many failures

I think this is one of the primary religious debates between Airbus and Boeing pilots - Airbus is a much more highly computerized experience inside the cockpit vs. Boeing which is still a more mechanical/tactile experience. For some fascinating background, see the NOAA on the recent AirFrance crash. They cover this issue specifically and essentially concluded that the pilots were likely overwhelmed with the number of error messages and warnings coming at them from the plane's computers and it became paralysis by analysis which they ultimately couldn't recover from.

Paralysis by analysis is one of the most common ways more intelligent opponents are beaten by less intelligent ones. From what I understand, this seems to hold true in chess, warfare, and a lot of other contexts. This might be good for us to remember in the coming years.

Yeah, bad software is the point Philip Greenspun makes about the incident: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/12/11/airbus-a380-en...

It is usually a trait of critical systems, imagine a similar disaster on the space shuttle, while being exceptionally reliable software I would imagine the same kind of issues with ease of use. Although you may have more mechanical control there.

This is actually being recognized now and being addressed. The thing is flight software has to conform to the DO-178B standard which is antiquated in how you can verify systems. Everything has to be done manually, even model/computer generated code. The result is you can handle far fewer conditions/branches than you'd expect.

That is changing with DO-178C which allows model generated code as long as you verify the modeler system. Then you'll be able to put in all the conditions/priorities and have a model spit out to be included in the avionics software.

As to the boeing vs airbus argument? As a private pilot I like a hybrid. I want the physical linkage, but I'd prefer if my systems management be fully computerized. There's just no reason for my gps/flight computer to not tell me "Bingo destination!" when I've got just enough fuel to get to my destination (+1hour emergency/maneuvering required by law).

DO-178C opens up a HUGE green field for avionics development. It'll be cool to see what happens in the future.

This must be getting hammered from somewhere with a bigger audience than here. Doesn't load for me.

OK, it finally loaded.

It's an interview with a senior, "Check Captain" who happened to be in the cockpit at the time in addition to the normal crew.

This was a major emergency and a lot more than just a single engine explosion.

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