Plane in 'serious incident’ after every Miss on board assigned child’s weight(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
Plane in 'serious incident’ after every Miss on board assigned child’s weight
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/tui-plane-serious-incident-every-miss-on-board-child-weight-birmingham-majorca
17 comments
Except maybe airlines don't want people to know how good they've gotten at, shall we say, "skirting the margins", in an effort to cut costs.
On small planes the pilot will personally witness the weighing of each passenger and then decide which seat "Miss Too-Much-Pizza" will be sitting in...
My dad mentioned to me once that back in the early days of commercial flying each passenger was weighed with their luggage
> It was programmed in an unnamed foreign country where the title “Miss” is used for a child and “Ms” for an adult female.
This feels like a requirements problem, more than an inadvertent bug. It makes me wonder why someone would decide to guess age (and thus weight) based on the name string alone. Don't the airlines usually have the birthdates of passengers anyway?
This feels like a requirements problem, more than an inadvertent bug. It makes me wonder why someone would decide to guess age (and thus weight) based on the name string alone. Don't the airlines usually have the birthdates of passengers anyway?
I guess System #1 isn't properly integrated into System #2 because the development is being undertaken by off-shored teams who don't understand the business domain.
With the amazing solution being
> The operator subsequently introduced manual checks to ensure adult females were referred to as Ms on relevant documentation.
> The operator subsequently introduced manual checks to ensure adult females were referred to as Ms on relevant documentation.
Back in the 1980s, quite a few American soldiers were killed when a chartered flight crashed in (I think) Newfoundland. It came out that the airline had reckoned 160 lb per person, which may be OK for the general population, but not for the airborne infantry.
It's fine for a an airline to be estimating weights ahead of time with this kind of approximate model, but the final check that the craft is within the safety envelope should be done by weight sensors on the wheels...
Allowing the use of approximate models leads to airlines trying to push the boundaries to earn more profits (when paid per kilo for cargo, an overloaded plane is more profitable than a correctly loaded one).
Allowing the use of approximate models leads to airlines trying to push the boundaries to earn more profits (when paid per kilo for cargo, an overloaded plane is more profitable than a correctly loaded one).
[deleted]
This wasn't a safety issue because the aircraft was overloaded, article doesn't mention it being over max takeoff weight or even if it had enough fuel loaded, it was specifically the thrust settings on take off which doesn't really impact airline bottom line. Weighing the plane does seem like the answer.
Very clickbaity title. It may technically be a serious incident wrt the AAIB, but the sum-up is:
“ Despite the issue, the thrust used for the departure from Birmingham on 21 July 2020 was only “marginally less” than it should have been, and the “safe operation of the aircraft was not compromised”, the AAIB said.”
“ Despite the issue, the thrust used for the departure from Birmingham on 21 July 2020 was only “marginally less” than it should have been, and the “safe operation of the aircraft was not compromised”, the AAIB said.”
Official report and link to PDF here: https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib-investigation-to-boeing...
The PDF isn't long and is worth a read if you're interested in learning from other peoples mistakes. Of note is that the issue was known and there was a manual workaround that was not used for that flight because the team doing it didn't work on a weekend.
Reading the document it looks like the manual workaround was then implemented into software. This hack just masks the underlying problem rather than providing a robust solution.
The PDF isn't long and is worth a read if you're interested in learning from other peoples mistakes. Of note is that the issue was known and there was a manual workaround that was not used for that flight because the team doing it didn't work on a weekend.
Reading the document it looks like the manual workaround was then implemented into software. This hack just masks the underlying problem rather than providing a robust solution.
Link seems to be dead, but doc is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/604f423be90e0...
Title gore. "A software mistake caused a Tui flight to take off heavier than expected as female passengers using the title “Miss” were classified as children, an investigation has found."
1. Weighbridges
2. Automatically weighing passengers at the boarding gate
3. Asking passengers to write their weight at check-in
4. Scales built in to wheel struts
Whilst this might not often be a safety issue of the kind exhibited in the article, knowing the actual weight might be cost effective because it would enable airlines to more accurately tune fuel and freight components, which are significant cost and revenue centres respectively.