Zeke is with Airbus, n'est-ce pas?
My understanding of the system is that it doesn't matter how many components it has, if the CPCS sofware is a centralized controlling medium and it is bugged, it is capable of doing "bad" things to the system as a whole.
Even if it wasn't a known bugged software program, you cannot incorporate it within a critical airliner system (as was done) unless it is qualified by the specified software qualifying process. Trying to cover up the fact that it allowed TTTech and NordMicro to hoodwink it does Airbus no credit. There's no suggestion that Airbus was complicit, but it certainly has now gone into active denial and supported the concealment of the TTTech and NordMicro illegality.
It also does the Austrian legal system no credit that all their courts have done is try to legally gag Mangan and send him broke (as well as sending the Gestapo around to roust his home and terrify his family).
Shame on Airbus. If the FAA was worth the paper it wipes its collective rear end with, it too would be looking at all the other airliners that run on this unqualified COTS software. But of course they're a tombstone organization that specializes in attending crashes, blame-shifting and cost-recovery.
We've not seen the end of the bogus software game within airliner certification. What Mangan has, and what worries all the fraudsters, is the paperwork that proves all his assertions; the paperwork that pretends that all the qualifying work WAS done - but which is palpably false. He has it - and this worries them terribly - as it should.
Mangan has pricked the balloon that represents all the pseudo-qualified COTS software that's floating around out there, masquerading as qualified under the regs. That balloon will now bounce off quite a few walls before settling limply to the floor. The question is whether any body cares. If no-one cares and we'd rather wait and see what happens (the first COTS software induced accident) then by all means tear up the rules and regs governing software qualification and wait for the echoes that will certainly emanate from the first such event.
But Zeke, don't just go on pointing out how much duplication there is in the number of valves and controllers. That matters not a whit in a centrally controlled system. We've already seen the example of the A340-500/600's faux redundancy within the fuel transfer system. The two computers just kept handing the flaw over to each other until eventually the inboard tanks ran dry, the inboard engines failed and the very confused Virgin crew diverted to Amsterdam. That A340 system had plenty of valves and pumps and plumbing too. No-one has looked closely at how that flawed system was qualified and certified. Airbus has just been allowed to patch it.
This one is due to reverberate even before the first accident gets a chance to echo up and down the Airbus and DGAC corridors.