PPRuNe Forums - FL3XX work around

Dear EESDL,

I see this only now and I feel the urge to respond thoroughly to what I perceive as a huge potential threat to our very existence.

Technically, when you own and manage a database, you can pretty much do anything you want with the data. As for a system that manages some 8000 data items that are all interconnected with all sorts of logic dependencies, I can assure you that changing something surreptiously with no nefarious effects is a daunting task. FL3XX keeps track of a lot of data sanity, for example a plane cannot land at KTEB and magically takeoff from LOWW next day, as this sequence would cause the system to crash (and that's not true for most other systems). Same goes for duty times. If you want to create logs that are useful towards Authorities, you cannot allow such errors to populate the database, so they need to be managed prorammatically. Perhaps one could manually alter action logs, that would be simpler. For instance if a pilot saved their flight at 10pm, I guess one could change that to read it was 8pm. As there is no logic dependencies to this information, it would not have consequences. However, at a lower level, the system will log the credentials used to write that change in the database, and if one wanted to erase that system log entry, well, I'm not sure it's possible at all. I'm no longer a developer, so I lost track of the details, but I believe if one wanted to change something and leave no traces, it's simply not possible with a reasonable effort.

Incentives count. I will spare you all the good reasons that I strongly believe in, and just drop one incentive we have: if ever any such thing should happen, eventually, and I think pretty quickly, everyone would know including the Authority. At that point, all serious operators would simply drop the platform and migrate to another one, either by own decision or ceding to pressure from the Authority and FL3XX would quickly disappear. What would be the reward to FL3XX for such an action? I don't think that corner-cutting operators would be ready to award a million-dollar thank you note for being complicit in avoiding disaster in next week's audit.

Good customers are for the long term. We have some 200 customers worldwide and most of them are with us on a long term journey. Flying planes is a tough business and not all make it for decades, but we strive to be a factor in every customer's success and we deploy every effort to be the best choice forever. Good customers challenge us to build more functionality so they can avoid mistakes, stay compliant, simplify their processes, and save a lot of time. These are their main reasons for using FL3XX. If they are happy they will pay our bills and continue on their success path as we do.

This is not to say that we don't occasionally get requests to change the past. We do. But our answer is simply NO. We might not articulate it so clearly to stay courteous and polite, but I can clearly state that it never happened and never will. Not on my clock.

So I don't know where you got this information (and I would love to know) because at FL3XX we simply do not consider that. I don't think that a user can alter records, at least not beyond the correction capabilities that are deliberately designed, though if there is some zero-day exploit, we'd love to know. Right now it's not among our priorities, as the incentives to fool the system are quite low, and FL3XX is not a stand-alone system of record: there are paper records, ATC records,maintenance records, for FTLs two pilots flying together should have the same entries.

Intellectually a stimulating question, in practice difficult in execution, fraught with risks, and mostly not worth the trouble.

I thank you for posting this, an opportunity to reflect on marginal outcomes and illegal activities, and if you care to share more details, I would encourage that. If you prefer to do that privately, please dm.