Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370

[Gladys]

I think you will find the perceptions of the individuals responding to you fall somewhat short of your intent.

[marauder]

Quite possibly,and I'm inclinded to agree with that to a certain extent

[Gladys]

Bless, night, night.

[marauder]

You too.

[P.K.]

Looks like they will try another search.

Good luck with that one.

[the stinking enigma]

I think they would probably have found it by now had the russians did it. It's a strange one, the american early warning radar must have all been switched off that day .

[doc.fixit]

............following on from this story, I just read an article that suggests that all commercial airlines now have a facility to remotely operate their aircraft in the case of terrorist on the 'plane and if true then that flight may have had it's controls hacked....................is this false news? If it is true I don't think I'm going on a plane again..............

[P.K.]

8 minutes ago, doc.fixit said:

............following on from this story, I just read an article that suggests that all commercial airlines now have a facility to remotely operate their aircraft in the case of terrorist on the 'plane and if true then that flight may have had it's controls hacked....................is this false news? If it is true I don't think I'm going on a plane again..............

Iirc from the time the transponder has to be physically switched off in the cockpit. Which it was.

[doc.fixit]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

Iirc from the time the transponder has to be physically switched off in the cockpit. Which it was.

sorry PK, don't understand............

[finlo]

9 hours ago, doc.fixit said:

............following on from this story, I just read an article that suggests that all commercial airlines now have a facility to remotely operate their aircraft in the case of terrorist on the 'plane and if true then that flight may have had it's controls hacked....................is this false news? If it is true I don't think I'm going on a plane again..............

Didn't some yank politician start blabbing on tv that they could remotely take control of commercial airliners until someone kicked him in the ankle to shut him up.

[Bobbie Bobster]

I would say no, no-one did.

[guzzi]

This:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Honeywell_Uninterruptible_Autopilot

But the official line is that this has not been rolled out to any commercial aircraft, precisely because of fears about hacking.

If the systems could be hardened enough to completely protect them against hacking, then they would help, not hinder security.  MH370 might have been prevented, in fact.

The current generation of pilots who fly us around all the time might have thousands of flying hours recorded in their log-books, but if they are flying a modern jet airliner, it is quite likely that very few of them have more than just a few tens of hours actually flying the aircraft, rather than just monitoring what the automation is doing.  When the automatic systems do occasionally throw in the towel for whatever reason mid-flight, they sometimes have the greatest of difficulty understanding what state the aeroplane is actually in. The crew of Air France 447, to give an infamous example,  failed completely to recognise their actual situation before their aircraft was irrecoverably close to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.  The podcast below 'Children of the Magenta' about the 'automation paradox' makes interesting listening. 

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/

The argument there is that pilots ought to practice actually flying the aircraft much more than they do at present, and ought to train for situations where the automation packs up. Who could disagree? But an alternative in future might be to take the human element out of the equation altogether.  The paradox is that whilst the human interface with the automation might have caused accidents like AF447, it has actually prevented countless other accidents by kicking in to keep the plane within safe operational limits. Sure, if we took the pilots away, then there would still be accidents. They might result from weather, from material failures or from errors made by programmers in offices thousands of miles away and months or years before.  But if there are fewer overall, that's a good thing, surely?

The big question is whether we will be prepared to accept that?

[piebaps]

But in AF447 for example, the automation cut itself out because of what was thought to be an iced pitot tube. Any automation has to rely on the sensors providing accurate data and until that bit is sorted then the man on the ground operating the plane remotely is never going to take over.

Look at BA38 for example and the last ditch flap adjustment made by the pilot non-flying which just allowed it to clear the A30 and the perimeter fence. That was an instinctive decision made by an experienced professional at a critical time. He was there feeling what was happening and knowing he only had a split second to make the call. Compare that with a guy remotely operating from miles away. By the time he had assessed the data, the plane would be in the fence.

[pongo]

1 hour ago, guzzi said:

If the systems could be hardened enough to completely protect them against hacking

It’s always going to be a mistake to begin from that perspective since no system can ever be hardened enough so as to be invulnerable. There will always be another way in - whether via some specific design vulnerability or via social engineering. Remembering that the technology is only one part of the system - the system is also the context, implementation, people etc.

It would be very dangerous to believe that a system could not be hacked.

[guzzi]

18 minutes ago, piebaps said:

But in AF447 for example, the automation cut itself out because of what was thought to be an iced pitot tube. Any automation has to rely on the sensors providing accurate data and until that bit is sorted then the man on the ground operating the plane remotely is never going to take over.

Look at BA38 for example and the last ditch flap adjustment made by the pilot non-flying which just allowed it to clear the A30 and the perimeter fence. That was an instinctive decision made by an experienced professional at a critical time. He was there feeling what was happening and knowing he only had a split second to make the call. Compare that with a guy remotely operating from miles away. By the time he had assessed the data, the plane would be in the fence.

 

Yes, AF447 did briefly have an iced up pitot tube that caused the speeds to disagree, the autopilot to disconnect and the flight control system to degrade to alternate law, where stall protections were not available.  However, all that pilots needed to do was to do nothing, just keep the aeroplane at the same thrust settings and flying straight and level. They had all their important flying displays except reliable airspeed. The icing cleared itself very quickly, the speed data became correct and the aeroplane began telling the crew every few seconds that it had stalled, all the way down to the ocean.  The pilots still did not recognise their actual situation, which would just have required them to pitch the plane down.  I would assume that 'do nothing' would be the default for any fully automatic, pilotless system in circumstances where basic air data became unreliable, and that would have been spot on the circumstances of AF447.

BA38 was a mechanical failure caused by icing in the fuel system and both engines rolling back to flight idle during the final approach.  Here is what the AAIB say about the flap selection: 

The aircraft manufacturer carried out an analysis of the nal approach of G-YMMM’s accident ight to establish the effect of selecting flap 25 at around 240 ft agl. The analysis concluded that, had the crew left the flaps at flap 30, the aircraft would have touched down about 51 m (168 ft) short of the actual touchdown on the accident ight, still within the airfield boundary.

One thing the crew omitted to do is cut-off the fuel pumps, which meant that fuel continued to be pumped out after the plane had crashed, during the evacuation.