Well, next time someone suggests that AF448 means we should just let the autopilot carry on and make the flight crew redundant, show them this. After wrong EPR indications which caused the autothrottle to progressively reduce power, the autopilot progressively pitched up to maintain height until the aircraft stalled.

@DanHulme faulty sensors and lack of stall training...

it wasn't faulty, just iced

s/faulty/malfunctioning/

yeah, you have to wonder about that design process

but then looking at how much complexity and cost every extra input adds in this kind of system, I can see why they might not have wanted to have the stall warning as an input to the a/p

They probably never though that engine idle + maintain altitude was a possible configuration for the autopilot to fly

The warning I'd expect is a "cannot maintain altitude" as the pitch up continued beyond some value

and it kinda shows that the programmer cannot foresee every situation

well, go fly an Airbus, where the first warning is that the a/p just disconnects

@DanHulme AF448? Or 447?

and if you mean 447, it clearly demonstrated that the pilot is needed. In this case AF obviously shared the opinion that the pilots weren't needed, and neglected to train them appropriately.

@falstro I don't think that's the only conclusion to be drawn from that. The lesson I took from that is that if you design the system to throw problems back at the humans in the expectation they will do a better job, you may well be disappointed.

@DanHulme Yes, I agree with that.

Regardless, from being an avid AvH reader, my confidence in AF's pilot training program has diminished over time to the point where I don't fly with them.

The problem is, of course, that if we say "well, the control system could be designed to detect and cope with this case", that's probably true, and it's not hard to ensure that it would deal with this particular case. But if you say "we need to train the flight crew better", it's hard to say whether they will actually perform better afterwards

That is true, I'm not basing this on af447 alone though

and I might be wrong obviously, but in my mind, AF pilots consistently perform worse than many other airlines, and I'm not going to blame the pilots for that.

@falstro given the stories I hear, it is not a problem limited to AF

@Federico I'm not saying that their program has gotten worse (it might have, along with others), I'm just saying that my confidence in theirs has :) (implying it was bad to begin with, just that I didn't know before)

@falstro I'm saying that theirs is not worse than others I have heard about. And I have heard of a general tendency for programs to worsen.

ok... i guess?

no, obviously is not ok, but that's "the way it currently is"(TM) unfortunately

sure. I just don't see how your comments relates to mine :)

your confidence in their program is low to the point that you actively decide not to fly with them. My comment would like to suggest you to either actively avoid many more companies, or realise that it might be just a case of confirmation bias.

I avoid several airlines

it might be unfounded, but confirmation bias sounds unlikely.

for years I had never heard of confirmation bias, and now it crops up everywhere!

@DanHulme That must mean it's something recent!!

@ratchetfreak ah, so you agree with me

reuters.com/article/us-nuclearpower-cyber-germany-idUSKCN0XN2OS

> As an example, Hypponen said he had recently spoken to a European aircraft maker that said it cleans the cockpits of its planes every week of malware designed for Android phones. The malware spread to the planes only because factory employees were charging their phones with the USB port in the cockpit.

uh oh

> Because the plane runs a different operating system, nothing would befall it.

sure, until they write an android malware to infect plane cockpits

I don't understand how the malware would get onto the aircraft from the phone. Why would the aircraft even try to mount the storage? What is the computer in the cockpit doing?

also, this is exactly how Stuxnet worked, so nobody should be surprised now

why isn't that a power only port?

maybe it is for loading stuff into the FMS?

maybe the aircraft is seen as a file storage

that's the wrong way around

and then ransomware could destroy the settings

the phone is the file storage

either way you'd expect some kind of security other than "it's hard to reach the port"

so the aircraft would have to be actively copying stuff off the phone or executing stuff from the phone

(unless it's a driver-level attack, but that seems unlikely as it would have to be specific to the device)

@DanHulme things like autopilot updates, charts and so on

@ratchetfreak exactly that kind of thing, but you wouldn't expect it to just copy everything off the phone

and that the stuff it looks for is signed

It's news media, they don't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to reporting on technology. :)

... or aviation for that matter.

but they quote Hypponen, and after years of hearing his talks and readings his reports I have never found reason to doubt him.

fair enough, I can ask around, see if there's any truth to it

@Dawn I flinch every time I see it too.. :)

heh, yeah.

it paints a weird picture, make a wrong turn and get violated by the controller... :P

@Dawn would make for a nice no-entry sign "trespassers will be shot; survivors will be violated"

it's not the only verb I've heard used that way, but I struggle to think of another example right now

I broke 10K rep today!

@rbp congratis

oh, we have an example in SE parlance

"I'm going to dupe that question" ought to mean "create a copy of that question" but means "mark it as a duplicate"