Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, December one, twenty twenty five. China has seized
Speaker 1: a commanding lead over the United States in sixty six
Speaker 1: of the seventy four critical technologies that will define the
Speaker 1: coming era, like AI, space research, environmental engineering and quantum computing.
Speaker 1: Australia is likely to fall short of the government's twenty
Speaker 1: thirty target for renewable energy. The Clean Energy Regulator says
Speaker 1: it's hoping for a better year in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Those stories are live now at the Australian dot com
Speaker 1: dot AU. As aircraft become more computerized and even pilotless,
Speaker 1: they're also more vulnerable to space events like the giant
Speaker 1: solar flare that put an air bus into an commanded
Speaker 1: dive and grounded thousands of flights over the weekend. So
Speaker 1: should we praise the manufacturer for acting quickly or rethink
Speaker 1: the risk of autopilot systems altogether. Robin eInsight is The
Speaker 1: Australian's aviation writer and she's joining me on what turned
Speaker 1: out to be a chaotic weekend for anyone who was
Speaker 1: trying to fly in America. It's been Thanksgiving weekend and
Speaker 1: a whole lot of families plans have been thrown into
Speaker 1: chaos by the sudden grounding of thousands of aircraft made
Speaker 1: by the European manufacturer Airbus Robin What happened at airports
Speaker 1: around Australia and around the world on the weekend.
Speaker 2: Well, this directive from Airbus went out late Friday that
Speaker 2: all air Bus A three twenty aircraft, and that was
Speaker 2: a variety of models from the A three one nine,
Speaker 2: the A three one eight and the three twenty one
Speaker 2: as well as the H three twenty that they required
Speaker 2: software update. That was about five one hundred aircraft worldwide,
Speaker 2: and another nine hundred of the older models actually needed
Speaker 2: a new on board flight computer altogether. So that directive
Speaker 2: went out and as a result, airlines had no choice
Speaker 2: but to ground those aircraft and carry out the update,
Speaker 2: which in Jetstar's case, had to be carried out for
Speaker 2: thirty four of its A three to twenty aircraft, which
Speaker 2: took a considerable amount of time given each of the
Speaker 2: software updates took about an hour to carry out.
Speaker 1: A lot of these aircraft that were affected are single
Speaker 1: aisle kind of workhorse planes. What kind of routes are
Speaker 1: they flying in Australia.
Speaker 2: Well, they fly predominantly domestic routes in Australia, and they
Speaker 2: also do some short haul international routes, say to Bali,
Speaker 2: to New Zealand, to Fiji. So all of those routes
Speaker 2: were impacted by this directive.
Speaker 1: So what it precipitated this was a sudden loss in
Speaker 1: height on a Jet Blue flight a couple of weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that what had happened there?
Speaker 2: Yes, the flight was going from Mexico to New Jersey
Speaker 2: and shortly, probably about less than an hour into the flight,
Speaker 2: they experienced this uncommanded loss of altitude that was so
Speaker 2: sharp a number of passengers were injured, had cuts and bruises.
Speaker 2: So the pilot elected to make an emergency landing at
Speaker 2: Tampa in Florida, and when they arrived, the aircraft was
Speaker 2: looked at. It was grounded until the Federal Aviation Administration
Speaker 2: and Jet Blue carried out an investigation. In the course
Speaker 2: of this investigation, it was discovered that solar radiation had
Speaker 2: impacted a digital component in the onboard computer, and it
Speaker 2: just happened to be that digital component that effects the
Speaker 2: elevator and eleron of the aircraft so affects its ability
Speaker 2: to go up and down.
Speaker 1: The word uncommanded is absolutely terrifying, Robin. It must have
Speaker 1: been horrendous being on that plane.
Speaker 2: It would have been, and particularly so for the pilots
Speaker 2: who wouldn't have really known what was happening. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, it felt like the aircraft would have taken
Speaker 2: over and it had suddenly started descending despite their best
Speaker 2: efforts to keep it on a steady course. So you
Speaker 2: can understand why they would have been keen to land
Speaker 2: as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Airbus A through twenty is use something called fly by wire,
Speaker 1: which is the sophisticated computer I guess interface between the
Speaker 1: pilot and the parts of the plane that make it
Speaker 1: go up and down and make it go flaps, elerons
Speaker 1: and so on. The fly by wire is designed to
Speaker 1: almost soften a pilot's reactions to things, so to interpret
Speaker 1: what the pilot is doing or telling it to do,
Speaker 1: and then to make that happen. And it's designed to
Speaker 1: avoid any sudden changes or drops in altitude or anything
Speaker 1: like that. The fact that in this instance, the fly
Speaker 1: by wire system is what was operating the air bus
Speaker 1: at the time that it suffered this dive. It speaks
Speaker 1: to how sophisticated modern airplanes are, but it also speaks
Speaker 1: to the fact that the pilot sometimes doesn't actually have
Speaker 1: any control at all.
Speaker 2: It's pretty terrifying when you think about it, and that,
Speaker 2: I guess has been an ongoing criticism of Airbus aircraft
Speaker 2: that they do rely so heavily on computers, bowing to
Speaker 2: an extent, still uses more of a manual operation. I've
Speaker 2: heard it described as using pulleys and cables. I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure that it's that basic, but the Airbus is
Speaker 2: very much their fly by wire model, where the pilot
Speaker 2: is almost secondary to the computers in some instances.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that at some point in the future,
Speaker 1: as planes become more and more sophisticated, that there won't
Speaker 1: actually be human being sitting in cockpits.
Speaker 2: Well, that's certainly the case, and already Airbus is developing
Speaker 2: a freighter aircraft that will only require one pilot, and
Speaker 2: pilots themselves are very concerned about this move. But this
Speaker 2: particular freighter aircraft is very much in demand by airlines
Speaker 2: who see considerable financial benefits to it. They see that
Speaker 2: it's a safe aircraft because of the technology that's used.
Speaker 2: But how long it is before we move to that
Speaker 2: for commercial passenger aircraft is certainly a cause for concern
Speaker 2: within the pilot community and probably in the passenger community too.
Speaker 1: Robin, why was it airbus planes that were so strongly
Speaker 1: affected by this as opposed to other manufacturers like Bowling.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. It sounds like it was
Speaker 2: a time and place issue. It has been described to
Speaker 2: me that solar radiation is the high energy particles that
Speaker 2: collide with the Earth's atmosphere, generating a cascade of secondary particles,
Speaker 2: including neutrons, protons, ions, and photons, And in the context
Speaker 2: of Adonix, neutrons are the primary concern.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to pause here for a sec to
Speaker 1: tell you about solar flares. Now this is coming from
Speaker 1: someone who isn't that interested in space, but I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention. A solar flare is when
Speaker 1: a dark spot on the Sun suddenly errupts. Right now,
Speaker 1: the Sun is nearing the peak of its eleven year
Speaker 1: cycle of activity, and throughout November there were solar flares
Speaker 1: and something called coronal mass ejections, where huge volumes of
Speaker 1: plasma exploded out into space. That phenomenon is normal. It's
Speaker 1: what causes the beautiful northern and southern lights, the auroras.
Speaker 1: But it can interfere with electronics, computers, and radio transmitters
Speaker 1: down here on Earth. Our atmosphere blocks most of that,
Speaker 1: but satellites and high flying aircraft are less protected and
Speaker 1: their computers can be seriously affected.
Speaker 2: And in this instance, neutron struck a digital component in
Speaker 2: the plane, so it may have been a case of
Speaker 2: bad luck rather than something that would have happened more
Speaker 2: in a more widespread Nature's that's my very layman's understanding
Speaker 2: of it, anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my layman's understanding is that it does something. Potentially,
Speaker 1: if this happens, it can cause something called a bitflip,
Speaker 1: where a zero and a one in a computing system
Speaker 1: are transposed and the computer gets confused. In an airbus
Speaker 1: A three twenty, there are at least three computers on
Speaker 1: board that are flying the plane, and they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to override an accident like this happening to
Speaker 1: one computer, it would suggest that the problem is bigger
Speaker 1: than Airbus could have possibly anticipated.
Speaker 2: Right Indeed, And I guess that's why it's taken the
Speaker 2: action that it has to do its best to safeguard
Speaker 2: the computers in all other aircraft perhaps didn't have this
Speaker 2: protection before, and to ensure that the chances of something
Speaker 2: like this happening again is very very much minimized.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing praise for Airbus for having taken action quickly
Speaker 1: and for having grounded planes, even turning planes around that
Speaker 1: were in the air at the time that the recall
Speaker 1: was announced. But what's your view, Robin, as someone who's
Speaker 1: covered aviation for a long time. Should we be praising
Speaker 1: Airbus here or should we be concerned that Airbus had
Speaker 1: allowed itself to be in a situation where perhaps its
Speaker 1: computers were not properly protected from solar radiation.
Speaker 2: I do think in this instance they do deserve praise.
Speaker 2: I mean, we look back at the Boweing seven three
Speaker 2: seven Max eight episode where there was one fatal crash
Speaker 2: and it was very much linked to this new system
Speaker 2: that Boeing had put on the plane without telling a
Speaker 2: lot of people, and rather than taking action then they
Speaker 2: waited until there was a second fatal crash before more
Speaker 2: action was taken to ground the aircraft and to rework.
Speaker 2: I guess the computers on board, so they didn't have
Speaker 2: this fault in them. So in that context, I think
Speaker 2: you have to praise Airbus for not mucking around for
Speaker 2: sort of as soon as it realized what was the
Speaker 2: likely cause of this uncommanded drop and altitude for the
Speaker 2: Jet Blue flight, it released the direction to pretty much
Speaker 2: ground most of the A three twenty fleet and make
Speaker 2: these corrections.
Speaker 1: How do you think other manufacturers will be responding now?
Speaker 1: Will they also be looking at the hardening that their
Speaker 1: computer systems have from solar radiation? For example?
Speaker 2: Within the airline community, there's always learnings taken from any
Speaker 2: sort of incident, So there would certainly other aviation companies
Speaker 2: such as Boeing and Braier they would be looking closely
Speaker 2: at this and making a decision as to whether they
Speaker 2: have to take action against their own onboard computers and software.
Speaker 2: That the sort of computers we're talking about, that they're
Speaker 2: closely guarded secrets in the airline industry. So just exactly
Speaker 2: you know, how the Airbus computers differ from others, we
Speaker 2: don't know, but that they would certainly be trying to
Speaker 2: take any lessons that could be learned from it.
Speaker 1: This incident reminds me of other sort of sudden loss
Speaker 1: of altitude moments that have happened in the air in
Speaker 1: recent years. Do you think any of those might have
Speaker 1: been connected to a similar situation?
Speaker 2: Well, I did wonder if they would go back and
Speaker 2: look at other other episodes of sudden losses in altitude
Speaker 2: that didn't have an obvious explanation. Often we put them
Speaker 2: down to clear air turbulence. So it will be interesting
Speaker 2: to see if they go back and review some of
Speaker 2: those instances through this lens.
Speaker 1: Coming up? Will this moment cause airlines and manufacturers to
Speaker 1: rethink the trend towards fully automated flying. You're a regular
Speaker 1: passenger as well as an aviation expert, Robin does knowing
Speaker 1: a lot about the way planes work and the safety
Speaker 1: of ours guys make you a more nervous flyer or
Speaker 1: a less nervous flyer. And how do you behave on
Speaker 1: a plane with all of this in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind.
Speaker 2: Well, to an extent, it makes me more confident because
Speaker 2: I know that the chances of anything going wrong greatly
Speaker 2: minimized in the air, just because it does have such
Speaker 2: a safety first focus. But also knowing that take off
Speaker 2: and landings are that the highest risk phases of the
Speaker 2: flight makes me very nervous. On landing, I have to
Speaker 2: say I do get a bit anxious until that the
Speaker 2: plane actually, you know, comes to a stop. But during
Speaker 2: the cruise flight, you know, the chances of anything going
Speaker 2: wrong is so small that you're better off up there
Speaker 2: than you would be down on the road.
Speaker 1: Will this be an inflection point do you think, Robin?
Speaker 1: In the way we think about the computerization of flying
Speaker 1: and perhaps the measures that manufacturers and operators need to
Speaker 1: take to keep their aircraft safe.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine them stepping back from computerization because
Speaker 2: it is such an integral part of aircraft manufacturing. So
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine this would and especially given the
Speaker 2: fact that there weren't any fatalities involved. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: whole loss. Makes me suspect that although it's been taken
Speaker 2: very seriously, it's not going to result in a dramatic change.
Speaker 1: Robin Einside is The Australian's aviation writer. You can check
Speaker 1: out all Robin's reporting, plus the rest of Australia's best
Speaker 1: journalism anytime at the Australian dot com dot au