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.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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