Heathrow Aircrash Speculation

[Barman]

[garga]

All the media are having a bash at this, finding 'experts' to speculate on the cause so we should too... Place your bets (and your theories) below.

I'm guessing that there won't be a strong smell of aviation fuel at the crash site... 

This is the news that we heard in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus about crash.
ENGINE FAILURE BLAMED FOR HEATHROW CRASH LANDING.
An investigation has revealed that the engines of a British Airways plane failed shortly before a crash-landing at Heathrow airport on Thursday.
Thirteen people were injured - one of them seriously - when British Airways flight 38 from Beijing came down well short of the runway.
It has been established the engines failed to respond at around 200 metres from landing.
According to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, an inquiry will now focus on more detailed analysis of information from the flight recorder and other recorded material.

[Darwins Selection]

All the media are having a bash at this, finding 'experts' to speculate on the cause so we should too... Place your bets (and your theories) below.

I'm guessing that there won't be a strong smell of aviation fuel at the crash site... 

This is the news that we heard in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus about crash.
ENGINE FAILURE BLAMED FOR HEATHROW CRASH LANDING.
An investigation has revealed that the engines of a British Airways plane failed shortly before a crash-landing at Heathrow airport on Thursday.
Thirteen people were injured - one of them seriously - when British Airways flight 38 from Beijing came down well short of the runway.
It has been established the engines failed to respond at around 200 metres from landing.
According to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, an inquiry will now focus on more detailed analysis of information from the flight recorder and other recorded material.

 

Like what the Captain had on his Ipod at the time?

[Barman]

All the media are having a bash at this, finding 'experts' to speculate on the cause so we should too... Place your bets (and your theories) below.

I'm guessing that there won't be a strong smell of aviation fuel at the crash site... 

This is the news that we heard in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus about crash.
ENGINE FAILURE BLAMED FOR HEATHROW CRASH LANDING.
An investigation has revealed that the engines of a British Airways plane failed shortly before a crash-landing at Heathrow airport on Thursday.
Thirteen people were injured - one of them seriously - when British Airways flight 38 from Beijing came down well short of the runway.
It has been established the engines failed to respond at around 200 metres from landing.
According to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, an inquiry will now focus on more detailed analysis of information from the flight recorder and other recorded material.

 

Like what the Captain had on his Ipod at the time?

I'm still more interested in what he had on his lap at the time... 

[Nick]

Que?

[Mr Happy]

I have had just managed to glide that huge bugger in without injuring any body I would have been over the bloody moon and have the biggest grin this side of Chesire.

Scuse me, I'm in Cheshire, it's no smile fest I tell ya.

The cats up here are as miserable and smug as everywhere...

[grumpyoldsoldier]

 

[Darwins Selection]

Have you ever seen a film called '2001' Marley? 

Thank you GM.

I am quite familiar with 2001 and the HAL reference - it was the Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do bit that I couldn't quite grasp the relevance of.

I don't recall that either Dave or HAL sang it - but then, I could be wrong.

***GEEK ALERT***

HAL sang it as he was being shut down.

Something like "My maker taught me this song when I was being built".

You were probably trying to pick the popcorn out of your lap at that point in the film.

[Marley's Ghost (Imbiber of Spirits)]

Mmmmm. . . . .

It would seem (from today's story in the Daily Mail) that my initial speculation may well have been correct.

Full story here

The real story was that the plane had lost power and the crew didn't appear to know why. Such mysteries concern air travellers more than heroics.

The Boeing 777 is a "fly-by-wire" jetliner. Its flying controls are activated by computer.

In this case, the computer seems to have shut down the engines and refused to re-light them. And there was nothing the pilots could do about it. Scary!

But if this is so, why did the Air 17 Accidents Investigation Branch say there was no need to ground Boeing 777s, of which BA has 43?

This suggests the AAIB know what caused the plane to lose power, and are confident it won't happen again. If they do, why haven't they let on to us about it?

There are no mysteries in computers-It's our relationship with them that is sometimes mysterious.

If BA038's computer decided to shut down its engines, it won't have been because it came to some perverse decision all by itself. It will have been its interpretation of human instructions. What is known as "a software anomaly".

HAL, the spaceship- controlling computer in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, accustomed us to the idea that such electronics might have a life of their own but that's nonsense.

With computers it's "rubbish in, rubbish out".

Comments?







P.S. Thanks for clarifying the link to the Daisy, Daisy element DS - I'd forgotten that bit - must re-watch when I get the chance.

[Grumpmeister]

Have you ever seen a film called '2001' Marley? 

Thank you GM.

I am quite familiar with 2001 and the HAL reference - it was the Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do bit that I couldn't quite grasp the relevance of.

I don't recall that either Dave or HAL sang it - but then, I could be wrong.

***GEEK ALERT***

HAL sang it as he was being shut down.

Something like "My maker taught me this song when I was being built".

You were probably trying to pick the popcorn out of your lap at that point in the film.

I put a HAL screensaver on my PDA and left it in the office once, scared the hell out of the old office numpty when it started talking and even more so when it sang that song. I'm still convinced he thought it was trying to have a conversation with him 

[Uncle Mort]

Still only speculation though.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that planes could be programmed to fly themselves but because the engines need to go into reverse thrust on touchdown and as it would catastrophic if that happened in flight, nobody would trust putting it under the control of the on-board computers .

[Barman]

Mmmmm. . . . .

It would seem (from today's story in the Daily Mail) that my initial speculation may well have been correct.

Full story here

The real story was that the plane had lost power and the crew didn't appear to know why. Such mysteries concern air travellers more than heroics.

The Boeing 777 is a "fly-by-wire" jetliner. Its flying controls are activated by computer.

In this case, the computer seems to have shut down the engines and refused to re-light them. And there was nothing the pilots could do about it. Scary!

But if this is so, why did the Air 17 Accidents Investigation Branch say there was no need to ground Boeing 777s, of which BA has 43?

This suggests the AAIB know what caused the plane to lose power, and are confident it won't happen again. If they do, why haven't they let on to us about it?

There are no mysteries in computers-It's our relationship with them that is sometimes mysterious.

If BA038's computer decided to shut down its engines, it won't have been because it came to some perverse decision all by itself. It will have been its interpretation of human instructions. What is known as "a software anomaly".

HAL, the spaceship- controlling computer in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, accustomed us to the idea that such electronics might have a life of their own but that's nonsense.

With computers it's "rubbish in, rubbish out".

Comments?







P.S. Thanks for clarifying the link to the Daisy, Daisy element DS - I'd forgotten that bit - must re-watch when I get the chance.

When you think that there are probably millions of lines of code that control the thing its not surprising that a certain set of circumstances may not have been anticipated and the program got into a loop of NOPs or something…

Having said that, I’d have thought that there would have been multiple systems, each developed separately that checked the actions of each other and could overrule a routine that was misbehaving.

It does seem strange that the rest of the fleet haven’t been grounded.

[Darwins Selection]

 

[Barman]

 

I said that! 

[grumpyoldsoldier]

 Maybe this popped up on one of their screens...