The Qantas flight that lost altitude heading to Perth from Singapore last week seems to have been a topic of conversation with just about everybody I have met over the last week. Most of what I have heard so far has been little more than speculation.
A story in today’s NZ Herald quotes the Australian Transport Safety Bureau;
A fault in the Airbus A330-300′s air data inertial reference system is believed to have led to erroneous information being sent to its flight control computer, causing the autopilot to shut down.
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Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation director Julian Walsh said the faulty unit continued to feed “erroneous and spike values” to its primary computers.
“This led to several consequences, including false stall and overspeed warnings,” he said.
“About two minutes after the initial fault (the air data inertial reference system) generated very high and incorrect values for the aircraft’s angle of attack.”
This led to the flight control computers commanding the aircraft to pitch down, Mr Walsh said.