A computer glitch that caused a Qantas plane to plunge into a 200m nosedive last week, injuring more than 70 people, was an isolated incident, Australian Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday.
Albanese said the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) was keeping a close eye on the investigation into why the Airbus A330-300 bound from Singapore to Perth unexpectedly pitched downward on Tuesday last week.
But he said the mid-air drama, which saw passengers and crew tossed around the cabin and forced the flight to make an emergency landing, appeared to be a one-off event.
“This appears to be an isolated incident and CASA accepts the manufacturers’ recommendations which will ensure these aircraft can continue to operate safely,” Albanese told parliament.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said on Tuesday that the incident was likely the result of a computer fault which switched off the jet’s autopilot and generated fake data, causing sending the plane into a nosedive.
The faulty unit fed “erroneous and spike values” to the plane’s primary computers, ATSB investigation director Julian Walsh said on Tuesday. “This led to several consequences, including false stall and overspeed warnings.”
“About two minutes after the initial fault, [the air data inertial reference unit] generated very high, random and incorrect values for the aircraft’s angle of attack,” Walsh said. “These very high, random and incorrect values of the angle attack led to the flight control computers commanding a nose-down aircraft movement, which resulted in the aircraft pitching down to a maximum of about 8.5 degrees.”
In the wake of the mishap, Airbus issued urgent instructions to all airlines using its planes on what to do in the very unlikely event that a similar computer fault occurs.
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