A400M Accident in Sevilla

[hurricanemk1c 195]

They have involvement in turboprops via CASA (C-295 is now marketed as Airbus C-295) and ATR (joint venture), although neither are direct Airbus designs

[MartinW 0]

After recovering them, the French authorities and Airbus had the data from the AF 447 black boxes in less time than this and they acknowledged it as soon as they did. Those had been three miles deep in the ocean for more than two years. Ditto the Germanwings crash - when they had the data they said so. I'm not looking for the gory details at this point but I can't escape my earlier conclusion - if they don't have the data by now, there's incompetence at work somewhere along the line; if they do have it they are being deceitful by not acknowledging it. Organizations are not deliberately deceitful unless there's a reason that they perceive to be to their benefit.

 

And neither of the accidents you mention had an unexpected compatibility issue to deal with that compromised their capability to access the data. So the fact that they accessed the data rapidly isn't relevant. They didn't have a Spanish judge that held on to the boxes for a week either.

If they do have the data, then no, deceitful is harsh and unfair I would say. The data from the black boxes may not have revealed anything of value, hence it wouldn't be relevant in terms of any kind of public announcement. If the black box data did reveal something or worth, then after a mere 10 days the investigating team have every right to withhold that information until they can double check, triple check their conclusions. It's their call. I'm sure you wouldn't want them to come to a conclusion and balls it up!

 

Again...it's only ten days that they've had the black boxes from the Spanish judge. Very few would regard that as an excessive time period in my view and proclaim incompetence, deceit, conspiracy to hide the truth!

All of the above may be true of course. But I say it's way to early to make such accusations.

 

What I expect is honesty, not necessarily full disclosure, but telling the public and their customers and their investors, past and future, what is going on at least in general terms. The stuff about "compatibility" causing a delay in accessing the CVR and DFR data is, in my opinion, smoke and mirrors.

 

 

Honesty you say. They have told their customers and their investors what's going on and in way more than general terms. They've revealed to everybody that there were issues accessing the data, that's "honest", they have also revealed to everybody that the investigation is heading in the direction of the ECU's, that's honest! They have also advised all operators to check the ECU's! Sounds like rapid progress to me!

 

However, you claim dishonesty, smoke and mirrors, incompetence... because they haven't confirmed that they now have the data from the black boxes! Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would imagine announcing to the world a likely cause of the accident, namely the ECU's, is way better than... "hey guys, we managed to access the black boxes by the way".

[MartinW 0]

As for ECUs, as far as I know the A400M is the only turboprop in the Airbus stable. This is most likely not anything remotely close to a FBW issue. Whatever the issue it may well have very little or no applicability to their non-military airliner products. I'd be surprised if it did, unless it's in the general realm of software design and management.

The ECU's control the engines. This issue, I read, is related to software that comes into play during extreme military manoeuvres. I would imagine something like rapid tactical descents, that sort of thing. It's not a FBW issue in terms of flight controls then, in terms of engine control I would imagine it's "by wire" though.

 

I don't favor the Airbus control philosophy but I don't believe the concept is seriously flawed. It's a viable approach and like anything else in aviation, is improving as the lessons learned are extracted from events, incidents and accidents. That's something that the aircraft industry does quite well. It's not raining Airbuses and there are plenty of them flying so they're doing OK.

 

 

If you're referring to my comment, namely "What are you guys expecting from the CVR's, major revelations that all of the worlds FBW aircraft are fundamentally flawed, all Airbus aircraft are about to drop out of the skies onto populated areas?"

My point is that this is a military aircraft, most of which are now grounded. The fact that they have or haven't accessed the black boxes yet will pose no risk to life or limb, the Earth wont explode or slip into a black hole, and the investigating team aren't deliberately delaying the investigation, they are working professionally and diligently to find the answer. As soon as the investigating team have the answer, the world will know.

 

With respect to conspiracy theories, it's not a theory, at least not in my case, just an opinion. Companies and countries sometimes tell lies of omission or outright, barefaced lies when they perceive it to be in their best interests. When the interests of a very large company and those of it's mother country are in synch, it's all the more likely. If the shoe were on the other foot and this were Boeing or Lockheed and the US NTSB or FAA, I wouldn't expect things to be much different.

 

An "opinion" that there's a conspiracy then. Companies and countries do indeed tell lies. But I say lets not entertain that notion in regard to accessing black boxes after only ten days. Lets give em a bit longer before we get stuck in.

[Christopher Low 63]

Why is there an "incompatibility"?

[MartinW 0]

Why is there an "incompatibility"?

Compatibility between systems Chris. The extracting system they were using belonged to the French defence procurement agency DGA,” The problem appeared to be a compatibility issue between the recorders and the DGA’s data reading system.

[hurricanemk1c 195]

The only reason I can think of why there would be an issue in reading it - the role of the aircraft in a military sense. If, for example, one crashes in a war zone and the 'enemy' has access to CVR / FDR reading (long. long shot at the moment), then it prevents the 'enemy' knowing what was going on in the aircraft, be it technical or cockpit wise.

 

Thus the CVR/FDR would be different to the normal airliner data. But that doesn't explain why the French authorities (who would have worked with Airbus and hopefully dealt with this aspect) having 'compatability' difficulties. If the recorders were damaged to such an extent, then why not just say so like normal accidents? Another alternative is giving the recorders to the intended customer - in this case Turkey, in case they specified a different recorder type

[J G 927]

I would imagine that such data would be encrypted, to a minimum of 128 bit.  Maybe they just cant decode it.

 

The French government are funny about encryption standards. I don't know if it is still the case, but s few years ago it was illegal for a company to use 128 bit encryption in France.

 

I was party to the design of an encrypted web data submission service. French companies had to use it from the UK as using it from their Paris offices was a breach of french law!

[MartinW 0]

I would imagine that such data would be encrypted, to a minimum of 128 bit. Maybe they just cant decode it.

The French government are funny about encryption standards. I don't know if it is still the case, but s few years ago it was illegal for a company to use 128 bit encryption in France.

I was party to the design of an encrypted web data submission service. French companies had to use it from the UK as using it from their Paris offices was a breach of french law!

 

 

To be honest, I don't think that was the issue.

 

The official comment was that it "appeared" to be a compatibility issue. If it was related to deliberate encryption I think they would "know"  what the issue was. This was an issue they were trying to fathom, not one with a known cause.

 

In addition of course, the data was accessible but at a very slow rate. If it was encrypted there would be zero access to the data.

 

I may be utterly wrong, wouldn't be the first time, but it appears to me to be an unexpected software compatibility issue rather than related to encryption.

 

On 13 May 2015 it emerged that technical issues were slowing retrieval of the crash data; General Bruno Caïtucoli, head of BEAD, reported that "there are technical issues in reading the system, and it is a question of compatibility between systems, so we are still trying to extract data. The extracting system we are using belongs to the French defense procurement agency DGA,” Caïtucoli said, noting that the problem appeared to be a compatibility issue between the recorders and the DGA’s data reading system, rather than an issue with the condition of the recorders themselves.[17]

[stu7708 244]

Either way it appears that the A400M is back in the air again. 

 

I spotted one on Flightradar24.com earlier today due to the fact that it briefly squaked 7700 and thus popped up as a notice on the phone..

 

Took off from Toulouse just before 10:00 AM CEST and it's still airborne

http://www.flightradar24.com/EC404/65cc255

 

 

[Andrew Godden 943]

Either way it appears that the A400M is back in the air again. 

 

I spotted one on Flightradar24.com earlier today due to the fact that it briefly squaked 7700 and thus popped up as a notice on the phone..

 

Took off from Toulouse just before 10:00 AM CEST and it's still airborne

http://www.flightradar24.com/EC404/65cc255

 

Not any more.  It just impacted with the ground in the vicinity of 43.620119N, 1.370944E.

[stu7708 244]

Indeed it did Andrew, but it managed to make it's way on to the taxiway. So I will assume it was a controlled and intentional impact with the runway

[donnybalonny 46]

The French havent grounded their A400M

They will use them only if it is strictly very important. (whatever that means) They said that right after the crash.

[stu7708 244]

This one came out of the Airbus facilities at Toulouse Anders. And the plane (EC-404, serial no 004) is still registered to Airbus, so it's not a plane in active duty.

 

Looking at the track it left on the map they were doing some interesting maneuvers too, so perhaps they were testing fixes for whatever cased the Seville accident (pure speculation here, but I assume it's one of the planes used for testing by Airbus).

[allardjd 1,853]

Then the Spanish prohibition of factory test flights must have been lifted, at least partially.

 

Does anyone know if the French A400 that brought the A400 program manager to Seville returned to France immediately, or if it remained in Spain?

 

John

[MartinW 0]

Latest!

Airbus admits 'assembly quality problem' after A400M crash

 

 

You have to admire their honesty. Openly admitting they have a "serious quality control issue".

 

 

 

Berlin (AFP) - Analysis of the flight recorders of the A400M which crashed in Spain on May 9, killing four, indicated there were no structural faults but assembly quality problems, a senior Airbus executive said in a newspaper interview to appear on Friday.

The black boxes confirm it. There was no structural fault, but we have a serious final assembly quality problem," Airbus group's chief of strategy Marwan Lahoud told the German daily Handelsblatt after receiving the first results of the analyses of the flight recorders.

In a statement released ahead of publication, Handelsblatt wrote that the units which control the engines of the turboprop A400M military cargo and troop transport were poorly installed during final assembly, which could have led to the engines malfunctioning and the plane crashing.

But Airbus's defence and space division told AFP that it was too early to draw any conclusions.

"We will need the full results of the investigation in order to have the full picture, so as long as there is no further communications from (the investigating authority) CITAAM it is too early to draw any conclusions from the accident," it said in a statement.

The division added that "like all accidents, it will certainly be a combination of issues and not one single cause".


It also said other A400M aircraft in service have already been subject to checks and are "100 percent protected from this failure".

Airbus on May 19 warned of a technical bug in the Electronic


Control Units (ECU) that controls how the aircraft's engine operates, which it discovered during an internal test it conducted independently of the investigation into the crash.

An expert in the sector speaking then on condition of anonymity said that a software bug could lead to a loss of control of engine power.

Airbus recommended inspections and possibly exchanging the motors or ECU's, but did not draw a direct link between this problem and the Seville crash.

The crash of the turboprop A400M military cargo and troop transport plane a few minutes into a test flight just north of Seville's airport prompted five countries -- Spain, Britain, Germany, Turkey and Malaysia -- to ground their planes pending the outcome of the probe which is being led by Spanish investigators.

Two of the six people on board the plane, a mechanic and an engineer, survived the crash and were sent to hospital in critical condition.

The development of the massive transport plane has been plagued by setbacks that led to years of delays and costly overruns.

The first aircraft was delivered in 2013, and a total of 174 have been ordered.

Shortly after Germany took delivery of its first A400M last January -- four years late -- Der Spiegel magazine published a list of 875 construction errors or malfunctions detected in the plane.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/airbus-admits-assembly-quality-problem-a400m-crash-182136177.html

[stu7708 244]

Thanks Martin, I was looking for that last night but couldn't find it.

I saw it on the Web versions of a Swedish tabloid, but I don't trust their knowledge of aviation, nor proficiency at translating aviation related news to fully trust what was written as true

[brett 2,314]

I still don't admire their honesty but appreciate the update Martin.

[allardjd 1,853]

This really is a positive development for them to release that information, which includes in a left-handed way the fact that the recorders have now been read and analyzed at some level. It appears two sources within Airbus have slightly different versions of the story, but it's not unusual in any large organization for the left hand to not be fully aware of what the right hand is doing.

 

The serious quality control issues in final assembly sounds pretty ominous, but is the kind of thing that is relatively easily corrected. That's a much easier fix, generally, than almost any level of re-design.

 

It will be interesting to see how soon the UK, Germany, Turkey, Spain and France begin flying theirs again. France had a partial prohibition, allowing them only to be used for critical missions. Everyone else grounded them outright, until that factory flight of 004 a couple days ago.

 

John

[MartinW 0]

I still don't admire their honesty but appreciate the update Martin.

 

That'll do for me, me old fruit. 

 

It's quite clear what Airbus did wrong. They employed Joseph Mutley, ace electronics expert. Who installed the ECU's by twisting the conductors together, and then wrapping them in sellotape. Probably used chewing gum too. Then he programed them with his Sinclair Spectrum.

[donnybalonny 46]

Hmm, this is not good.

 

A parallel story:

Some weeks ago i read a short article about Airbus engine control problems and that maybe a large amount of AC would have to be checked. I couldnt find the article later on and since it was one of these short yahoo front page news, I didnt take it very serious.

I think it was about their Jet airliners but I´m not sure. Has anyone else read something about this?

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

this is the results of "clever" executives trying to cut corners and reinvent the wheel,

 

unfortunately it is the future we are headed towards,

back in the day a manufacture placed their trade under the harshest conditions; that’s what commercials used to be, here is our craft; it will outlast you,

 

today’s it’s all about replacement parts and designed time based failures; to keep executives looking good when the quarter year report comes in,

no one cares about delivering a solid product these days; low cost, low grade composites and uneducated factory line assemblies save money!

 

[donnybalonny 46]

But Chris, thats what they call progress.......

[MartinW 0]

It seems the accident was linked to a "data wipe error".

Files required to interpret the engines readings had been accidentally deleted.

Essentially the engines were stuck in idle.

"Torque calibration parameter" files had been accidentally deleted during a software installation process ahead of the plane's first flight.

Airbus have confirmed that the pilots had switched the malfunctioning engines into "flight idle" mode in an attempt to fix the problem. Without the vital files in place, the engines were stuck in idle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33078767

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Bloody computers again! What happened to REAL piloting where the guy in the seat made the decisions and not some electronic gnome! I think we rely on the things far too much. What would happen in a combat situation if the computer got fried by enemy action? do we lose the aircraft? Where as something like an older C-130 or AN-12 would get you home, the A400 would just flash on the screen, "Computer says No, Bye bye!" Totally unnacceptable.

[MartinW 0]

It's not so much "bloody computers" Alan. More like bloody human beings. A computer is as good as the human beings that program them, and as good as the human beings that operate them.

There's no defence against an incompetent action like deleting important files, and no defence against a lack of necessary software safeguards to prevent important files from being wiped. We can't blame "computers" for that, only people.

Computers weren't the issue, human error was. And human error rears it's ugly head in regard to many technologies used in aviation.