Courtney. I never use Google. However I should have just posted the Les Echos headline I received this morning.

The problem was not with the data recorders. The problem was with the data readers. They were incompatible with the recorders. The manufacturer (L-3 Com) was able to download all the data using their readers and the data has been sent to the Spanish investigators. Still awaiting their analysis.

From today's German paper ....
 

There's a report in today's newspaper from the German Press Agency (DPA) that some sort of installation error may have occurred in the software on the accident aircraft to cause the crash. This has not been confirmed by Airbus.

Then there's the usual speculation about how this might cause people to lose confidence in the quality control standards of Airbus. Anyway, the report points away from some sort of crew error that might have caused the crash. It also reads that there's no basic problem with the powerplant design.

Interesting - Aren't the recording performed in a standardized manner (sorry if this sounds like a naive question) ?

No more so than airplanes

Beta and VHS

Android and Windows

Pacemakers

etc.

I guess you build your data recorder to record data from a particular aircraft. A Tornado recorder wouldn't be much good in a 747 where would be so many more channels required. Or it may be that a Mac can't read a Windows hard drive - yes I know there are ways!

Anyone know if the data is encrypted?

I don't know for sure, but there's several reasons why you would not want to encrypt the data and not a single reason why you would. That said, the data might not be in what we would consider "plain text". It may be binary, binary coded decimal, or plain ASCII decimal.

Grumpy: In military aircraft there may be some desire to keep flight and voice data encrypted. The aircraft might be lost over hostile airspace and the adversary may get to the boxes first, and that data could prove useful to an adversary.

Here is recent press release for one such system:

Curtiss-Wright Announces Encrypted Cockpit Voice and Flight Data Recorder

Thank you Sandiego, you beat me to it.

Agreed, there are definite reasons why you would encrypt such data in the Military world, I would also suggest if your having trouble recovering such data your main aim initially would be to ensure that the data your trying to extract is not being damaged by your attempts to read it.

The problem was with the data readers. They were incompatible with the recorders. The
 

Does this not suggest the manufacturer had never downloaded data from the FDR/CVR during the course of the certification program? One would think they would, as a matter of course, have downloaded the FDR/CVR data to compare with the downlinked telemetry during the course of the test program.

I would like to understand that the software user manual was not correctly understood by the crew ?
That document is very important because a software user is not an aircraft user. The software user is a total stranger to the bit by bit process. Every word of that written process (the user manual) must be perfectly clear. Mostly the soft user don't use the document, or don't have it.

IT is a still new culture where we jumped too quickly. It looks like a play,but isn't a play.

There we all go speculating again. And not in a very smart way.

Twochai, no, ADR data is not used to compare with anything. There is no requirement to do so. The test data recorders/telemetry do all that is required. If you know of a reason to compare with other data sources, perhaps you might explain to us. The ADR is an independent archive for one use only and is not designed to be milked after every sortie.

Roulis, the crew did not install the software and they do not have a user manual for it, certainly not in the sense your words might suggest. The manufacturer and their sub-contractors write and install the software. The crew do not install the software. The software is installed by engineering personnel, once installed it resides in the aircraft systems. I suspect I may have misunderstood you as I don't think your translation is that good. But I respond to the way it sounds so that no one else thinks your statement means what it sounds like.

Courtney Mil,
You didn't misunderstand me. After a former Air France Captain and Airbus fan compared the "installation" error to another classical Crew action (French radio) I wanted to have confirmation or corrected information that the misinstallation was/wasn't a Crew action. Therefore my post could seem a bit provocative. You brought the answer, thank you. It means Crew have been victims of IT world.

As a retired IT guy and Airline pilot I'm preaching since 1988 that IT testing has other rules than aircrafts' certification There is a lack in our FBW planes resulting of a sad confusion well pointed in the Ariane501 report. That is first an Ocean of vanity and lack of modesty not only the money competition.

I understand now.

As for FBW testing, yes it is done in a very different way to hardware. As an example, the flight control software in a certain current fast jet is so complex that to test it fully using traditional methods would have taken decades. So some of it is modelled instead. So software tests software really.

Courtney

It looks like the flight recorder data has been reviewed, and an Airbus official quoted with "....a serious final assembly quality problem."

Airbus admits to A400M assembly problems | Business | DW.DE | 29.05.2015

Several reports have suggested a temporary loss of power to three engines, which just strikes me as an odd number. I could see one, two (same wing), or even all four being subject to software or otherwise issue, it is just that three, if confirmed, strikes me a bit more odd or unprecedented. Just a point of interest- no theory- no blame, just caught my eye.

The problem is we know nothing of the actual software fault. It could be that the gitch rolled back power on the engines one at a time and then when the third engine rolled back, the software switched to an "alternate law" (or rough equivalent) that prevented the fourth engine from rolling back and then the other three engines starting rolling back up but not in time to avert the crash. Of course this is pure speculation on my part and is provided strictly as an example of how three engines MIGHT roll back and not the fourth.

Separately on Boeing installations, the engine software queries a pin to determine where it is installed on the aircraft (#1, #2, #3, or #4 position). If this pin was not correctly installed during assembly (the cause was described as a final assembly quality fault) perhaps all four engines thought they were in the #4 position and three engines rolled back when the data they were getting stopped making sense. Again pure speculation on my part. But the bottom line is that when software is involved there could be any number of explanations of how the engine software interacted with each other and with aircraft software to cause a three engine power roll back.

C17 vs A400M
 

Regarding C-17 [Sorry if this is a bit off-topic]

If I understand right, a C-17:

• costs half as much as an A400M
• carries a heavier load
• carries a bigger load
• carries the load further
• needs fewer trained crew because of the above
• Has inter-operability
• Is fully developed

So why are we, in Europe, buying into this silly aircraft ?

PAX

You answered your own question. The very last line of your post, 5th and 6th words, would (I suggest) provide the answer/reason you seek!

Pax, I offer you might be missing a few points, and although it is tough to find a price, I feel you are way off in saying a C-17 is less than 50% of the A-400 purchace price. Way off.

A-400 customers mostly needed a C-130 and C-160 replacement/augment, with a bit more capability than what those have, not the huge leap the C-17 brings. For many scenarios you do not need the capability the C-17 brings. The A-400 is a "tweener" between the C-130 and the C-17, and for some customers that makes sence, especially for many of the European customers that are not flying continental distances that often. The UK has decided they need both (and that makes sense for them).

The A-400 claims lower operational costs. I would not want to pay the refueling bill on either, but a C-17 burns more fuel.

The 400 is likely better for tactical airstrips. Although the C-17 touts rough strip capabilty, it is mostly used as a hub and spoke type transport. What you read and whom you believe may influence you thoughts here.

Political and industrial implications are also important. "Buy American" is not always the answer- and I am one (American), but understand that.

You don't need a semi-truck (lorry for my UK friends) for every run to the home improvement store....

Sandiego, good post. :D :ok:

So you're saying the C-17 gets up quicker, stays up longer, penetrates deeper, and delivers a larger load?


COOOLLL!

True. Mostly. In current USAF service.

But during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghan wars, C-17s flew from major air depots in Europe and Turkey directly to very austere forward airfields in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which USAF calles "direct delivery" and at which the C-17 excels. And C-17 is flying into plenty of very austere fields deep in Africa right now. The C-17 cannot hope to match the A400's ground flotation (reportedly 100 passes on a CBR 6 field?), but there are plenty of 3000 ft CBR 9/10 fields all over the world.

Indeed. But the 6-8 billion it took to develop the A400 would have bought a LOT of fuel. I doubt that the program development costs could possibly be justified by the lower operating costs even if the A400 used zero fuel. If operating costs were a significant driver, C-130 would be far cheaper to buy and operate, and when you needed more capacity, you could rent it from the Russians, Americans, SAC, UK, and others who have longer legged, larger capacity airlift. Bottom line: IMO there's a LOT more at work here than lower operating costs.

From Aviation Week

Incorrectly installed engine control software caused the fatal crash of an A400M airlifter in Spain on May 9, a senior Airbus Group official says.
In an interview with the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt, Airbus Chief Strategy Officer Marwan Lahoud said the incorrect installation took place during final assembly of the aircraft, which led to engine failure and the resulting crash.

Lahoud said that data extracted from the flight data recorder this week and seen by Airbus engineers confirmed the internal hypothesis that there had been no problem with the aircraft.
“The black boxes attest to that there are no structural defects [with the aircraft], but we have a serious quality problem in the final assembly,” Lahoud told the newspaper.

The news emerged two days after Airbus CEO Tom Enders criticized Spanish agencies for withholding the flight recorder data.

“We would like to see the data and compare it with our hypothesis and proceed quickly to understand the causes of accident, so our aircraft can get back into the air,” he told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Amsterdam on May 27.

Four Airbus Defense and Space flight-test personnel died when MSN23, an A400M destined for the Turkish air force, crashed during its first flight from Seville’s San Pablo Airport. The aircraft suffered technical problems shortly after takeoff and came down on agricultural land just north of the airport.

The accident cause hypothesis prompted the company to send out an Alert Operator Transmission on May 19 to the five A400M operating air arms, which requested all operators to perform one-time specific checks on the electronic control units (ECUs) fitted to each engine on the aircraft before the next flight.

For Airbus, the findings will come as a relief, as a hardware issue on the aircraft or in the Europrop International TP400 engines would have resulted in costly delays. But it may be several more days before A400M operators are satisfied with the cause and return to operations. Of the five A400M operators, only France has continued flying its fleet of six aircraft. Germany, Malaysia, Turkey and the U.K. are still pausing flight operations.
Spanish authorities are still withholding the company’s permit to test fly new-production aircraft from Seville, but flight tests of the prototypes are continuing.

Sandiego - thankyou for your reply
 

I'm not so sure about that, when the various subsidies to Airbus are taken into consideration. The last I heard, UK was spending £3.2Bn for 25 A400M's. But the overall cost appears now to be a state secret.
And then there's the support costs.

Sure, but if you can keep the semi-truck running for less than the cost of the fancy pickup truck, because it's easier to get it it serviced, and easier to find spares, maybe the semi-truck makes more sense even if sometimes it is more inconvenient.

["artic" might be a better UK-English translation ;-) ]

It seems to me like a mix of C130J's - or old airframes upgraded to near C130J standards - and C17s would do a better job, for less money, and cost less to maintain. And be easier to fix if you land with a few holes in the airplane.

Back in the 1970s, in the UK, I think we made wrong decisions by scrapping TSR2 in favour of not-working (then) F111, and scrapping supersonic heavy harrier (think V/STOL, super-manouevrable F4). Not that TSR2 was perfect...

Now, in Europe, we've been making wrong decisions by throwing vast subsidies at Eurofighter and A400M. We could have saved money, and gotten a better plane by just buying F22, instead of building Eurofighter.

Back on thread but I am puzzled about this accident. I can't believe that post production/assembly and pre first flight, there is no systems testing and ground runs that would have highlighted incorrect engine operation. I am not talking about full software testing but just overall system and function testing.

Pax Brit'
 

TSR2,P1154 and the 681 ( think I've got the last 2 right ) were all cancelled by Harold Wilson's Labour government shortly after their election in October 1964.

Many years later IIRC the ST Insight team published an article that claimed Labour promised to 'The Cousins' that we would scrap TSR2 and buy the F111 if they gave us a free hand in selling the Lightning to the Saudis. They claimed that we reneged on the deal once the Saudi contract was secure.

I think the F111 was in service with the USAF in the late 60s.

Back on thread..
 

The Oberon:
There is a comprehensive post-FAL inspection and aircraft systems testing, which includes high power engine ground runs, taxying checks, and a rejected take off amongst other things. Clearly, throughout these procedures and checks, nothing untowards was identified, otherwise the first flight would not have been authorised.

Brian ,
you have indeed got the HS 1154 and 681 (STOL) correct. They were cancelled by the Wilson government but it is debatable if the British aircraft industry could have delivered these two very advanced a/c on time and on budget.

Thanks T.T.

This part really bothers me. I deal with engines and engine control s/w on a regular basis, and on the surface it simply doesn't make sense. Loading "Level A" (flight critical) software is common, well documented, and close to Murphy proof process. The s/w load process has a series of self-checks that verify that the load was successful - and in most cases if it's not successful not only will you get appropriate error messages, the system simply won't function.

It doesn't really matter if it's engine controls, flight controls, or another system - Level A is Level A and the assumption is if you get it wrong, it could cause a crash, so the processes make sure it's really had to get it wrong. I keep thinking there is more to this than is being publicly released.

If they did manage to botch the s/w load on multiple engines in such a way that it wasn't readily apparent, I sure hope the root cause is freely and widely, shared and doesn't get caught up in any Military or Proprietary restrictions.

I was wondering whether this is the first time that the prime cause of a major accident has been software, I can't think of another case as serious as this.

I don't see why Airbus seem so happy that this isn't a major structural fault. If the wing spar had failed we could be confident that it could be prevented from happening again. But what yawning chasm must exist in their quality control if badly loaded software can bring a state of art aircraft down like this.
I thought the days were long gone where the test pilot didn't know whether he had a machine capable of flying until after the first flight had successfully ended.

elconfidencial article
 

Accidente de avión en Sevilla: El accidente del A400M, un fallo en cadena desde Alemania a Sevilla. Noticias de Andalucía
in Spanish; for the adventurous, a Google translation:
https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url

Among assertions made by an anonymous source in the aeronautic sector (my translation): In Seville's Final Assembly Line, "Numerous security protocols have been skipped. If ground tests of the plane had included running engines at high speed before the maiden flight, the engines would have paralyzed before the plane got airborne". The journal states A400Ms produced before the troubled MSN23 had undergo such test.

I remark that this statement contradicts an earlier one reported by elconfidential, that the FADEC failure could not have been detected until the plane is airborne. A false news, a dismiss, two scoops.
Accidente de avión en Sevilla: Airbus detecta un fallo eléctrico en los motores del A400M siniestrado en Sevilla. Noticias de Empresas
https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url

I wish Airbus made an official statement of the known facts to cut on speculation.

Trumpet Trousers

Just a question: Would the completed aircraft be put into full "flight" mode with all engines and systems running during post assembly testing?

OAP

OAP
 

Yes. The process for MSN23 would be no different from the other aircraft that preceded it.

Elconfidential's source is clearly clueless as to the post-FAL, Pre-first flight procedure...

Trumpet Trousers

Thanks

OAP

Airbus doesn't want to pay ! They will only deny any responsibility. Why should we hope to know the truth and their work uses with smoke blankets subcontractors ? Investigation from independent international experts must go on like in the Ariane501 report.

Before sending test pilots and test engineers to death every possible soft test must be done ! Test crew don't exist to be sacrificed on reception test flights.

Imagine that : 19000 lines of code to fly !!!!! SOS Wright brothers !

Airbus Says Crashed A400M Aircraft Had Power Freeze in 3 Engines
By Andrea Rothman
(Bloomberg) -- Airbus Group SE said early findings from Spanish investigators probing the crash of an A400M military transport plane suggest all systems except engine controls already identified as troubled performed normally, probably ruling out intrinsic design flaws.
Three engines experienced power failure after takeoff and didn’t respond to the crew’s attempts to restore them, while other gear performed as expected in the aircraft that crashed near Seville in Spain killing four people on May 9, according to a statement from the Toulouse, France-based company. Following the crash, Airbus instructed operators of A400M transports to check the model’s engine-control system before making further flights.
The Spanish investigators looked at data from the plane’s flight-data-recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Indications that everything but the engine-control software performed normally would provide assurances that the plane’s essential design is sound. Airbus didn’t draw any conclusions about the design of the plane and its systems in today’s statement.
The engines were built by Europrop International, which includes Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, Safran SA of France and Germany’s MTU Aero Engines AG.
The first A400M, handed over to France in 2013, was delivered a decade after the program was begun and four years later than planned after a spate of delays from glitches including engine-control software malfunctions. Even before the crash Airbus warned of new cost issues in ramping up output.
The defense program -- Europe’s most expensive -- has cost the company and governments 25 billion euros ($28 billion), about a quarter more than originally planned, though militaries from the U.K. to France and Germany are keen to get their hands on a modern transport plane to replace aging equipment.
Airbus has a backlog of 162 of the aircraft, with 12 already handed over to buyers. A schedule to deliver a total of 14 A400Ms this year is under review.
The A400M fits in between Lockheed Martin Corp.’s aging C-130 Hercules model and the larger Boeing Co. C-17 Globemaster and satisfies an acute requirement that spans the airlift of military hardware through troop transport to disaster relief.
For Related News and Information:
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--With assistance from Christopher Jasper in London.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Andrea Rothman in Toulouse at +33-5-6365-7668 or
[email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Benedikt Kammel at +49-30-70010-6230 or
[email protected]

AOT Update
 

Further information from AD&S:

See: Military Aircraft Airbus DS | Press Center