20 DEC: Two sudden losses of altitude by a Qantas Airbus off Western Australia, causing dozens of injuries, have been traced to a computer programming fault.
The October 2008 incident, during a night flight from Singapore to Perth, led to 12 passengers suffering serious injury and 39 being taken to hospital after the jet made an emergency landing at Learmonth airport, near the town of Exmouth.
Some 60 of the plane’s 303 passengers were not using seatbelts and were flung about the cabin, along with several cabin crew during a dive of 690 metres lasting 23 seconds.
Soon after there was a second plunge of about 120 metres lasting 15 seconds.
In a 313-page report just issued, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says the incident occurred after incorrect data from a sensor measuring airspeed, altitude, air pressure, temperature and the flying angle was fed to computers controlling the flight.
Airbus said it was the only case of the flight computer going haywire in 28 million flight hours of the Airbus A330 or A340, but the ATSB says there was no correlation to the way the Qantas plane was maintained or operated.
Airbus subsequently reviewed and improved its computer algorithms and revised software was installed in November 2009.
"As a result of this re-design, passengers, crew and operators can be confident that the same type of accident will not reoccur," the report said.
