Airbus warned of possible software issues before A400M crash

Seven months prior to the fatal A400M crash at Seville, Airbus was warned of thedanger of an accidental software wipe of the engine control software. The crash was caused after the engine control software was removed during a software upgrade. After takeoff the engine controls went to full power and stayed there as a result.

Europrop International said that they should have installed the software, using their equipment, while Airbus says that since it is a defense program it was up to them to handle the upgrade. The accident exposes the confusion resulting from the program. The A400M is a military program that underwent civil certification, but apparently no one sat down and figured out who should have been responsible for what beforehand.

www.reuters.com...

Lost of critical data is possible during update but there is no procedure in place, or it wasn't used, to verify the loss hasn't happened post update.

Surprising doesn't even cover it.

You would think what happened at the Paris airshow (A320 incident) would've taught Airbus to fly with known faulty software.

This is crazy.

When you design software that controls a critical system, verifying that input data is valid is a no-brainer. Invalid data should cause the engine control program to throw an exception all the way back to the central control software. And given the severity of this failure, the central control shouldn't allow the critical system to come online.

What's even more surprising is that the installer wiped the data files and didn't try to replace them. It's a critical system, so any installation failure should have rolled back any system changes it made while it was attempting to perform the upgrade.

At the very least a simple script that verifies everything is what and where it is supposed to be once the update completes is pretty simple.

Sounds like this is a problem on the manufacturers side. Airbus should have been able to perform an upgrade like this without relying on the manufacturer.

-dex

Oh lordy....fly by wire gone wild....


crap,...what a world Lord

in a car ya turn the key off

Thank goodness we don't have business and personal computer Operating Systems that try and download and automatically install updates and applications. Just imagine the mess we would get ourselves in.

a reply to: GBP/JPY

Try again. It had nothing to do with the fly-by-wire. The problem was in the FADEC.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: GBP/JPY

Try again. It had nothing to do with the fly-by-wire. The problem was in the FADEC.

True, but really only in a part of the FADEC system, the EEC (electronic engine control) or ECU (engine control unit. Therein lies the software. And every time I learn a new aircraft, I have to memorize a whole new dictionary of acronyms.

a reply to: F4guy

Which is why it was just easier to say FADEC.

One interesting part of this accident was the pilots reaction to the ATC's order regarding limiting altitude, given that the engines basically went into all or nothing mode it would seem the ATC and pilots didn't communicate well, and that letting the aircraft climb using full power would've given the aircrew chance to evaluate their position and possibly do a twin engine failsafe landing which is a practiced maneuver.

I'm going to touch base with one of the RAF's A400 instructors when I can to get his views.