Tech columnist Robert X. Cringely once wrote that "If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."  I don’t know about costing one hundred dollars, but the explode once a year killing everyone inside part is on the way…

Computer error behind Qantas midair drama

Authorities have blamed a faulty onboard computer system for last week’s mid-flight incident on a Qantas flight to Perth.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said incorrect information from the faulty computer triggered a series of alarms and then prompted the Airbus A330’s flight control computers to put the jet into a 197-metre nosedive.

At least 51 passengers and crew were hurt, many suffering broken bones and spinal injuries, when the plane carrying 313 people from Singapore to Perth climbed suddenly before plunging downwards on October 7.

The plane was cruising at 37,000 feet when a fault in the air data inertial reference system caused the autopilot to disconnect.

But even with the autopilot off, the plane’s flight control computers still command key controls in order to protect the jet from dangerous conditions, such as stalling, the ATSB said.

"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," the ATSB said in a statement.

"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."

The pilots quickly regained control of the jet, issued a mayday emergency call and requested an emergency landing at the Learmonth air force base in remote Western Australia where passengers received medical treatment.

"The crew’s timely response led to the recovery of the aircraft trajectory within seconds. During the recovery the maximum altitude loss was 650 foot," the ATSB said.

The plane’s French-based manufacturer has issued an advisory on the problem and will also issue special operational engineering bulletins to airlines that fly A330s and A340s fitted with the same air data computer, the ATSB said.

Oh…your aircraft needs our $230,000.00 per seat service upgrade patch 3b_06-A…

Like that Airbus, my Mercedes-Benz is fly by wire.  Seriously.  There is no direct linkage between the accelerator pedal and the engine.  I push down on the pedal and the onboard computer decides what to do, depending on how fast I’m already going, what gear I’m in, whether I’m driving up or down an incline, the road conditions as judged by the traction control system and I’m sure a zillion other variables it’s evaluating from one instant to the next. 

The gear shifter is also more of an electronic control then a direct linkage, although it will lock the transmission in Park.  I can press a button next to it to choose between two pre-programmed automatic shifting patterns, "Sport" and "Comfort".  And it learns your driving habits and adjusts the pre-programmed shift patterns accordingly.  There is a fairly complex set of steps you have to perform to reset the transmission program back to the factory default if you don’t like how its adjusted itself to the way you drive.

Mostly, while driving Traveler, I don’t really notice any of this.  The car responds to me very sure and certain.  I was driving in a sudden torrent of rain several weeks ago and never, Never have I felt so confident in the car I was driving, so solid and sure was the feel I had for the road while the skies had opened up all around me.  I could barely see more then a few feet in any direction at times and the traffic was slowing to a crawl, but the car felt absolutely tight and sure.  I never felt the slightest bit of skittishness or uncertainty in the car.  The Mercedes was just There.

It’s easy to forget driving that car, that I am not nearly as much in control of it as I was my 1973 Ford Pinto.  It just feels like I have more control.  It’s a way better engineered automobile.  It is much more a driver’s car then anything I have ever owned.  But there is a computer, that’s trying to be as invisible as possible, between me and the car.  This technology has been working its way into modern automobiles for quite some time now.  You may already be driving a car with an adaptive transmission.  Fly-by-wire is in the new 2008 Accords, so I was told when I went shopping last year.  It’s probably in a lot of other cars by now too.  The new hybrids would pretty much have to be fly-by-wire.

It’s nothing to be afraid of, so much as Aware of.  All technology can fail.  It’s just that computer technology is scary because it works invisibly.  You can see the failure mode of an engine.  You can take it apart and look at it and see where it broke and reconstruct the sequence of events from all the broken pieces.  Software is like a ghost in the machine, running spirit-like inside hardware with no moving parts, just a lot of silent, miniature black monoliths on a green circuit board.  When a program crashes, it vanishes like the soul from a corpse.  You may know the instructions it was executing at the time it crashed, but it’s unlikely you’ll still have access to the state the system was in just prior to the crash.  You have to debug it with whatever state it was left in After the crash…assuming you can get that out of it…and whatever other traces of itself it left behind before it died.  It may take days or weeks or months to figure out what it was doing in those final moments, and why the fuck it was doing it. 

This is why most cars these days have "black boxes" in them…just like airplanes.  For those cases when…you know…the whole thing just blows up…