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In flight entertainment systems have certainly been the cause of crashes in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.wikipedia.org
by verelo 11y ago
In flight entertainment systems have certainly been the cause of crashes in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111
"the crash was generally believed to have been caused by faulty wiring in the cockpit after the entertainment system in the plane started to overheat"
It's not too far fetched to think you could end up with an infinite loop (or other random issue) in some inflight entertainment system code, causing it to overhead and potentially ignite. I'm sure there are plenty of safeguards, but they too could fail...and this is why we still have circuit breakers and a master switch in planes that a human can control. Sadly humans too can (and often do...) fail to make the right decision.
Any system other than flight surfaces, avionics and the source of propulsion to an aircraft add some degree of risk that we could otherwise fly without.
Edits: Spelling and general sillyness.
- dominotw 11y agoTo be fair, that had nothing to do with software running inflight entertainment.
- verelo 11y agoI'm not sure I agree. While its possible the overheating was due to a failed fan or something physical, but its also very possible that the software running on this hardware caused it to overheat.
- pkaye 11y agoThis seems to be a hardware issue.
- verelo 11y agoPeople seem to be missing my point. To be clear, i'm trying to suggest that there is a high chance that the hardware fault that was triggered by overheating, was potentially caused by a software fault.
- pkaye 11y agoIt is not good that the software malfunctioned but it should be totally isolated from rest of airplane function. Also if software could cause overheating, someone should have redesigned the hardware (heatsink/fan for example) because it was already marginal.
- verelo 11y agoYep. Likely multiple failures. The software shouldn't cause extra heat, the hardware should be able to handle it, the insulation in the plane shouldn't have caught fire, the pilot should have pulled the circuit breaker sooner...the list goes on.
- iSnow 11y agoUnless there's a hardware fault, no runaway loop would overheat the system so much it would ignite.
- verelo 11y agoYeah you're probably right. Often when you review critical failures you find multiple things went wrong at once to cause the catastrophic failure. I would place a good bet that there was a failed fan, poorly secured heatsink or maybe just a clogged air filter that meant the hardware was unable to handle the additional heat being produced.