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Flight incident: Passengers titled ‘Miss’ counted as children [pdf]
- midasuni 6y agoSo operator (TUI) mis calculate estimated weight. Clearly nothing to do with the aircraft.
- nimbius 6y agoor is that..Ms calculate?
- saargrin 6y agois there a hackernews gold i can give you?
- pbrb 6y agoLOL, I choked on my breakfast laughing at this.
- _Microft 6y agoFun fact: SpaceX had two marine vessels for recovering rocket payload fairings from the sea. One was called Ms. Tree, the other one Ms. Chief. They are being replaced by a new boat right now, so let's see if they come up with another funny name for her as well.
- krallja 6y agoMy mother was on a softball team in medical school named Ms. Diagnosis.
- Zagitta 6y agoOne could say they miss-calculated :^)
- richardwhiuk 6y agoStruggling to work out the impact - no damage, and no injuries, and safe operation of the aircraft wasn't caused. Surprised this classifies as a serious incident.
- tyingq 6y agoFlawed weight and balance procedure, so a "nothing bad happened" situation, but "something bad could have happened". So serious in the sense that changes needed to be made to avoid a real issue in the future.
- midasuni 6y agoI’m surprised that estimated weight is used at all - surely the plane knows the actual takeoff weight, wouldn’t that be the number that’s checked before taxiing starts? Same with actual weight distribution
- jjk166 6y agoHow would the plane know it's weight? You could measure the forces on the landing gear, but that would be subject to huge errors (inflation of the tires, stresses from the hydraulics, etc.), much higher than the 1% error required to notice this discrepancy. They do have checks in place, which is how they noticed the issue, but it still comes from keeping track of what goes on the plane. > As part of the prestart procedure, the flight crew reviewed the flight plan, which gave an expected takeoff weight (TOW) of 66,495 kg (Figure 1), and the load sheet, which gave a TOW of 64,889 kg (Figure 2). They noticed that there was a discrepancy, with the load sheet showing 1,606 kg less than the flight plan. They noted that the number of children shown on the load sheet was higher than expected, at 65, compared to the 29 which were expected on the flight plan. The commander recalled thinking that the number was high but plausible; he had experienced changing loads on the run-up to the temporary grounding as passengers cancelled and altered trips at short notice.
- midasuni 6y agoI guessed the force on the landing gear would be able to be measured - Pressure in suspension perhaps.
- tyingq 6y agoAlso, 737-800, not a MAX. Occured 21 July 2020. And... "Whilst an incorrect takeoff weight was used for aircraft performance planning, the thrust required for the actual TOW and environmental conditions (88.2% N1) was marginally less than the thrust used for the takeoff (88.3% N1). This meant the safe operation of the aircraft was not compromised." So it was a "something bad could have happened" situation that called for a change in procedure to avoid a future, real problem.
- ploika 6y agoI don't think anyone is confusing a 737 with a 737 Max. The issue here is that bad check-in software caused a serious incident.
- sidlls 6y agoIt certainly did have something to do with the aircraft. The weight distribution in the aircraft is actually quite important, and a badly distributed weight can cause instability and a crash. These kinds of reports aren't meant to isolate a cause for the assignment of blame. They are meant to provide comprehensive information about the incidents, including identification of the root causes and the remedies for them.
- anonu 6y agounder-estimate weight -> under-estimate fuel -> fuel exhaustion -> crash While my armchair opinion is that ~1500kg mis-calculation of payload on a Boeing 737 is minor - this is one of those problems you should treat pretty seriously as it might have repercussions on other flights.
- seoaeu 6y agoYeah, they intentionally include a safety margin in the amount of fuel to bring. Doesn't make it OK just to miscalculate the payload weight and assume the margin will save you.
- louthy 6y agoWow. That's is insane. It appears to be the airline operator (their IT system), not the airline manufacturer that's at fault here though. So it seems a bit weird that this is categorised as a Boeing issue?
- duxup 6y ago>categorised as a Boeing issue Seen this a couple times in articles about Boeing. Another article had a title about how an airline cancelled all their Boeing orders. Reality, they cancelled all their Airbus orders too (clearly stated in the article) ... and the airline reiterated in the article would continue just flying Boeing planes and in the future planned to buy a different model of Boeing instead of the one they canceled. But the title implied something different, and the comments were filled about how this was a big deal for Airbus... and the typical tribal riffing off the title.
- usremane 6y agoThe issue was first noticed by the aircraft regarding the weight difference. So i guess, they have to report an issue to drill down the root cause. This is because several things could be the root cause. It could also have been possible that the weighing scale (i don't know the technical term) of the plane was faulty. Point being they need to report it as an issue. But i didn't see anywhere in the report that it mentioned airline manufacture was at fault? It concludes that the IT system used by the operator was at fault.
- bbarnett 6y agoYet the article also says it assigns a female adult, and a child a specific weight. Which means the weight is a ballpark anyhow. They aren't weighing anyone until totalled when on the plane. Would they blame overweight people, if a bunch of over average people got on, and skewed that?? edit: just re-skimmed the article, I still don't get how a statistically averaged weight, which can be wildly variable for specific flights, causes issue because it was wrong. Am I missing something? Is the average supposed to mostly be OK, thus not requiring fuel changes and delays for almost all flights, sav the outliers?
- choeger 6y agoSo, if a flight has a high percentage of overweight passengers that causes an incident, too?
- sparkling 6y agoFlights leaving from Mississippi better watch out
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt could, but practically speaking the difference between a full-size adult and a very heavy adult tends to be constrained by the physical limits of the seating capacity, requiring passengers that could be overweight enough to impact the flight safety constraints to buy two seats.
- choeger 6y agoRight. But wouldn't that system still count just one adult and assign them, e.g., 69kg of "standard weight"?
- shadowgovt 6y agoNo; if one person buys two seats, I'd assume naively that it would count that as two adult-sized passengers. (The actual details of their architecture I'm not privy to).
- jjk166 6y agoyeah, but you also have an empty seat that was also assigned 69 kg of standard weight, so it's as if they were assigned 138 kg.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoFrom what I understand passenger planes and cargo planes alike need to balance and distribute the mass onboard. If they don't they could run into aerodynamic issues. It's a enter of mass vs center of lift kind of thing. However the balance would have to be really far off for anything serious to happen.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kjakm 6y ago>> Following this serious incident, the operator introduced a daily check to ensure adult females were referred to as Ms on the relevant documentation, with a secondary check by Operations staff against passenger loads. A more formal system of checks was introduced on 24 July 2020. Surely the solution is to fix the software? Miss is the 'appropriate' title for an unmarried woman or girl. Why not have a person select 'adult' or 'child' when booking (I'm pretty sure most airlines I fly with do this already).
- steerablesafe 6y agoI'm pretty sure I give precise date of birth already every time I fly.
- rantwasp 6y agoMiss. This is not how we do things around here /s
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt's fascinating that this issue occurred; I'd be shocked if the gestalt of data doesn't have enough information to know every passenger's age. Pure speculation on my part, but it may be a data-hiding issue - if they realized late in design that the passenger manifest system had to feed into the weight estimator, but the passenger manifest (for privacy reasons, or simple "Don't access more data than you need" coding best-practices reasons) only had access to passenger names, surnames, prefixes, and IDs. It shouldn't have happened (clearly, that's the point an engineer should be pulling the red lever on schedule and doing the work to get the data that's needed to the service that needs it, including clearing legal hurdles for privacy, if necessary), but I can easily imagine it happening if quality took a back-seat to deadlines.
- V-2 6y agoIt appears to stem from wrong translation: "The incident occurred due to a simple flaw in the programming of the IT system, which was due to the meaning of the title ‘Miss’ being interpreted by the system as a child and not an adult female. This was because in the country where the system was programmed, Miss is a child and Ms is an adult female." Not sure what the country in question is - the report doesn't name it.
- salicideblock 6y agoThe HN post title is severely misleading. From the linked article: "There was a fault in the system which, when a female passenger checked in for the flight and used or was given the title ‘Miss’, caused the system checked her in as a child. The system allocated them a child’s standard weight of 35 kg as opposed to the correct female standard weight of 69 kg." So titling it "Root cause: adult females checked in as 'Miss'" is wrong. The linked article does not even have the word "root".
- kjrose 6y agoAbsolutely. The issue was the assumption that anyone who used the term miss would be a child and not an adult which is an incredible oversight.
- iudqnolq 6y agoNot according to the company, which remedied the issue by running a batch script to change people's title to Ms if the other records indicated they were adult females. Apparently the people who check in after the batch script runs the night before takeoff can be safely ignored.
- Grustaf 6y agoThis is a workaround based on the existing programmer error. It doesn't indicate that "ms" is correct in any way, just that it gives the correct result.
- iudqnolq 6y agoYes? How does that relate to what I said?
- Grustaf 6y agoYou said that since they solved it by changing miss to ms, that means that miss was actually wrong. This is not true. Besides the fact that miss does NOT mean child, what they did was a workaround. They solved it that was because it was simpler. It doesn't indicate that they think miss = child is correct. Most likely they didn't even have access to the code.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- V-2 6y agoThe root cause wasn't that adult females were checked in as "miss" (which implies it was done against, or regardless of their own intentions). The root cause was that the system assumed "miss" = "child". So it's a case of a mislabelled category. The real root cause was a mistranslation: "in the country [India?] where [system programming] was performed the title Miss was used for a child, and Ms for an adult female".
- shadeslayer_ 6y agoIndian and I can confirm isn't the norm.
- nightpool 6y agoI think "Indian?" was just V-2 editorializing, the article itself doesn't name the specific country
- V-2 6y agoYes exactly, it was only my guess, based on: a) the assumption that country in question was likely English-speaking (which increases the risk of translation mistakes, due to the "false friend" effect) b) the fact that India is a powerhouse when it comes to offshoring software development. If it's not the case, well, I wonder if someone is able to identify the country? Out of sheer linguistic curiosity
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThe real real root cause was that average weight is calculated based on title instead of date of birth.
- alexgmcm 6y agoBut why is it even using the title to determine whether or not they are a child? The whole thing is just bizarre - I guess it was outsourced to some chopshop.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
- larrydag 6y agoSo there was nothing in the "system" to check that there was an unusual amount of children passengers on-board this flight?
- mrlonglong 6y agoWhy didn't they use the person's age to decide if a person is a child or not?
- srswtf123 6y agoAre you required to give your age? Why not use their weight if we’re requiring information about passengers?
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoSeems like dirty hacks, all over the place. Your boarding pass doesn't usually have your date of birth, and it seems the system that estimates the weight only has access to the boarding pass info/passenger manifest. The BP does have your title, although it makes me wonder how they differentiate between adult man or child.
- jjk166 6y agoyou are required to give your age, you are not required (or even have the option) to give your weight.
- monkpit 6y agoAren’t you required to say if a passenger is a minor?
- macksd 6y agoWhy don't they use the person's weight to decide how heavy they are?
- danso 6y agoRelevant programmer section on pages 5 & 6: > The system programming was not carried out in the UK, and in the country where it was performed the title Miss was used for a child, and Ms for an adult female, hence the error. A manual solution for correcting the problem was quickly identified that involved a team identifying upcoming flights, checking each booking, and changing all adult females with the title ‘Miss’ to ‘Ms’, which overcame the problem. Subsequently, this work was shared between two teams, and the process was completed every afternoon and evening for the next day’s flights. It was checked again every morning, where possible, before flights departed... > The upgrade programmers adapted a piece of software, which changed the title of any adult female from Miss to Ms automatically, and this was implemented on 17 July 2020. This adaptation was only capable of changing bookings before check-in. Any passenger bookings with the title Miss already checked in, including online up to 24 hours before departure, would not be amended. On 20 July 2020, the programmer was making enhancements to the program to improve its performance. This should not have stopped the program from working, but as this was a ‘fix’, it could not be known for sure.
- Grustaf 6y agoThis does not increase my confidence in the airline industry.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIT wise I'm pretty confident that the airline industry is a cobbled together mess. A much bigger problem than COBOL that has been doing the rounds on HN lately. (mind you, there's probably some overlap in the venn diagram)
- tyingq 6y agoEspecially since they have the DOB to go by. Urgh.
- shadowgovt 6y agoHonestly, the airline industry is quite fascinating in terms of how safe it is. But that safety is maintained by procedure, cross-checking, and (especially in the commercial space) aggressive investigation of any deviation from expectations. This serious incident is a great example of that process in action. The initial issue they were investigating was that the flight gets computer-analyzed to compare the actual dynamics of the plane to the theoretical dynamics. That analysis revealed a 1kt difference between what the takeoff speed should have been and what it was measured to be (about a 0.76% deviation from expectation). That <1% deviation led to an investigation and a 7-page report. Such a level of scrutiny is expensive, but it's how commercial air travel has gotten to the "safer than cars" level it currently supports.
- Milner08 6y agoNothing to do with the Boeing 737, actually just an operator error. Doesn't even seem worthy of the title 'Serious Incident'. Interesting to see that title is used to give some kind of estimated weight to the passenger though.
- whalesalad 6y agoProgramming virtue of the day - explicit is better than implicit.
- jfengel 6y agoThis principle can conflict with Don't Repeat Yourself. If you can infer something from existing values, you're often better off than making it explicit and redundant. In this case we seem to be talking about a heuristic for estimating weight, and heuristics are kind of a weird middle ground on that score. If all you need is an approximate value and can compensate for errors, it's reasonable to use a properly-designed heuristic rather than an explicit value. That said, a lot about this story smells weird. They already had an explicit value in the age field, and this particular heuristic is completely useless for male passengers. So it's less about proper programming practice than the fact that somebody is just plain doing something stupid. So stupid that I'm not sure we're actually getting the story correct.
- iudqnolq 6y agoAvaition Clickbait: This one simple trick will fix your outsourced IT at minimal cost! > The upgrade programmers adapted a piece of software, which changed the title of any adult female from Miss to Ms automatically, and this was implemented on 17 July 2020. This adaptation was only capable of changing bookings before check-in. Any passenger bookings with the title Miss already checked in, including online up to 24 hours before departure, would not be amended. On 20 July 2020, the programmer was making enhancements to the program to improve its performance. This should not have stopped the program from working, but as this was a ‘fix’, it could not be known for sure.
- sumanthvepa 6y agoCan aircraft not have load sensors installed in the undercarriage? That would love the need for guessing the weight.
- hfjgktnrnf 6y agoThe PDF states that they somehow knew the actual weight of the airplane. Which make you wonder why they still use the estimated weight when they can have the actual one.
- pwg 6y agoBecause as @syberspace stated above, and I pointed out below, the ground crew needs a weight figure to plan some things prior to loading/boarding (at least cargo distribution in the cargo hold and amount of fuel to place into the fuel tanks). To use actual weight when individual passengers weights are unavailable (as in this case) would require first boarding all passengers, then waiting at the gate while the fuel tanks are filled and the cargo in the hold is loaded and distributed based on the actual passenger weight. The passengers would not want to wait for this loading order, nor would the airlines as it would directly increase their turn around time for the aircraft.
- syberspace 6y agothey do. which is how they figured out the discrepancy between estimated and actual weight. but they do need to estimate the weight to plan the loading of baggage and cargo, e.g. more male adults in the back of the plane means cargo will prefarably be put in the front of the hold and vice versa.
- rytis 6y agoSimple data design flaw, or the absence of such. "Ms", "Miss", etc is only a title and that's about it. Want a flag child/adult, well, add it then. Or better yet, use age to determine average weight even more accurately. Edit: It usually means a disaster when people try to read "between the lines". One favourite example is trying to infer purpose/role of the server based on its hostname. When hostname starts with "X" it means only one thing - the first character of the hostname is "X", no more, no less.
- yuriko 6y agoSee also: https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib-investigation-to-boeing-737-8k5-g-tawg-21-july-2020 https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib-investigation-to-boeing...
- sigmaprimus 6y agoThis story seems like a SJW or alt right set up to get normal people to argue about "Pronouns", with a heap of fat shaming thrown in for good measure. If load weight is such an issue, why wouldn't they just have scales at the gates or somewhere alone the taxi route that weighs the entire loaded plane. In the trucking industry there are even certain trailers with scales built-in and portable enforcement units that the highway enforcement use to catch and fine overweight loads. I have heard stories of helicopter passengers needed to be seated according to their weight to balance a load but would hope the margin of error in a 737 covers atleast 2X passenger weight, they made everything else double redundant on them.
- duxup 6y ago>If load weight is such an issue It is an issue, passenger weight is included in calculations, but you don't have to weight everyone.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoYes my wording was imperfect there, loading is and issue and there are many solutions to the problem. Other than my unfortunate turn of phrase, I feel the point I was trying to make was valid.
- D13Fd 6y ago> This story seems like a SJW or alt right set up to get normal people to argue about "Pronouns" Huh? "Miss" is not a pronoun. This is terrible system design regardless, as "Miss" can refer to an adult woman. Per Wikipedia: > Miss is an honorific for addressing a woman who is not married
- sigmaprimus 6y agoRegardless of wether "Miss" is a pronoun You understood what I was saying. And the fact that You argue the fact that it is not a pronoun just enforces my argument.
- greenshackle2 6y ago
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- hirundo 6y agoThis looks like a systemic error in the software development process. If an individual programmer caused it, it should have been caught in review. If it came from a requirement, that requirement was broken and it should have been caught in review. Either way, a bug that results in an aircraft weighing 1,244 kg more than expected is indeed deadly serious. I write plenty of bugs, but luckily worst case is usually a web page failing to load rather than hundreds of people falling out of the sky. Our development process is clearly not adequate to this domain. An adequate process for this would necessarily slow down development greatly and make it far more expensive. It's so much easier and cheaper to cut corners.
- tyingq 6y agoHaving spent some time in the industry, I can say there is a fair amount of scrutiny on the software that's used directly for weight and balance purposes. This situation, though, where input data to those systems is bad before it even gets there, is a loophole of sorts. Somewhat related, this makes me worry a bit about all the data privacy regulation that keeps you from testing (easily, at least) with real production data. Good testing from the W&B software might have unearthed the lower overall weights per aircraft.
- Igelau 6y agoI wonder what a "Dr" weighs in this system.
- sgerenser 6y agoPresumably adult, but a plane full of Doogie Howsers would be a problem.
- Grustaf 6y agoThe really scary part is that someone decided to use the output of the booking system as an input for deciding fuel levels, without auditing the entire chain.
- rlpb 6y agoSurely the real root cause here is that their systems are overloading the title field with age assumptions at all, rather than their heuristic being wrong? Given that the age information is safety-critical, it should be passed through as a separate field directly. Doing anything else is error prone, as demonstrated in this case. I'm disappointed that the AAIB did not identify this.
- alexgmcm 6y agoYeah - I'm amazed this is the first comment that has brought it up. If you need to identify the passenger as child/adult (especially for something as safety critical as this) then it should be its own field.
- jfengel 6y agoEspecially since the title field is completely useless for distinguishing male adults from male children. The entire calculation is valueless. It feels like something is missing from this story.
- alexgmcm 6y agoAren't male children referred to as Master? It sounds terribly old fashioned though.
- sgerenser 6y agoIf I recall from booking airline tickets (in the long, long ago), you always have to enter your birthdate to book the ticket in the first place. Why wouldn't that information just be used to determine child/adult?
- nautilus12 6y agoThis is terrifying
- mrfusion 6y agoSo they allocate seating by weight to balance the plane?
- devit 6y agoWhy don't they automatically measure the actual airplane weight with sensors instead of doing this weird estimation? Based on the article, it seems like they only use that to determine how much engine thrust is needed for takeoff, so it doesn't seem they need to know the weight in advance.
- Someone1234 6y agoCost. We have the technology to weigh aircraft. But they'd either be onboard, and thus safety critical and subject to a lot of abuse (being inline with the landing gear presumably), or they could be on the ground/at the airport, which means every airport in the world needs them, and they need to be compatible with every aircraft's footprint (i.e. huge or highly adjustable). Plus the time cost/queuing for getting weighed. Then adding fuel after (since fuel is based somewhat on weight).
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoPlus it's infeasible to retrofit all planes in service now (going back 30 years or so? I vaguely recall that planes are kept in service for that long) with weight measuring systems. But that's probably the issue here as well, compatibility with software systems going back 30, probably more years.
- devit 6y agoWhat about a simple software dynamic control system with an accelerometer then? Basically you apply some thrust to the engine and look at the resulting acceleration with an accelerometer. Knowing the remaining length of the runway one can compute the acceleration that produces takeoff velocity at the end of the runway minus a safety margin, and then change engine thrust by the ratio between that desired acceleration and the measured acceleration. The remaining length of the runway can be computed by knowing the total length, initial position and integrating the accelerometer data, or by using GPS knowing the coordinates of the runway ends. This also automatically handles factors like wind, variable friction on the runway and miscalibrated engine thrust.
- chinathrow 6y agohttps://www.aeroinside.com/15544/tui-b738-at-birmingham-on-jul-21st-2020-female-adults-declared-children-wrong-takeoff-mass-computation https://www.aeroinside.com/15544/tui-b738-at-birmingham-on-j...
- D13Fd 6y agoIf anyone else was wondering, page 89 notes that: > safe operation of the aircraft was not compromised.
- ISL 6y agoI have always assumed that weight-and-balance was assessed using load cells or strain gauges in the landing gear. Is that not so?
- hyko 6y agoYou could say that was a near miss.
- dbrower 6y agooof
- maury91 6y agoOther than the obvious but of calculating "miss" as a kid, what about calculating the weight based on age and sex? That's potentially inaccurate too... Imagine if there's a bodybuilding convention and a plane gets half booked by bodybuilders, they will be calculated with the average weight of an adult but they weight more than the double
- BlueTemplar 6y agoHeh, I was half expecting this to somehow be a Miss/Hit bug, considering the recently discussed Norway => No bug...
- hyko 6y agoThe aviation industry could teach tech a thing or two about safety and quality. Note that a safe flight is not one where the aircraft happens to land in one piece with all hands alive; things that are out of spec, mysterious, and curious are treated as serious problems, because they are the building blocks of an accident chain that will ultimately lead to disaster (also note the influence of other “links” in the chain, e.g. the effect of the pandemic shutdown on the pilot’s thinking and the upgrade itself). That approach is a lesson...and then the software guys turn up to fix their bug report: upgrade programmers adapted a piece of software, which changed the title of any adult female from Miss to Ms automatically Note this didn’t help the flight in question, because their data had already been added in advance of the fix (due to online check in). It’s interesting that the issue was known about in advance of the incident flight, but perhaps not the significance if it happened en masse. On the face of it this just doesn’t sound like a fix that addresses the root cause. There are clearly internationalisation issues at play, along with entity design issues, and UI issues. So the issue lurks in the system, ready to form part of some future accident chain; the report is a page too short.
- marcodiego 6y agoSimilar: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/132349/travel-agent-didnt-append-mr-to-my-name-and-my-name-ends-in-ms-this-caused-my https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/132349/travel-age... also https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/149323/my-name-causes-an-issue-with-any-booking-names-end-with-mr-and-mrs https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/149323/my-name-ca...
- jshprentz 6y agoThis incident was summarized and discussed at The Aviation Herald. http://avherald.com/h?article=4e59311c http://avherald.com/h?article=4e59311c