6 ms·

I think if you asked the engineers who designed the airbus in question, could you create a "leak" warning, using just the existing sensor suite, they'd say "sur

• Dalewyn 4y ago
  If I recall, one of the duties of the pilots (usually the first officer's) is to keep track of fuel levels and consumption throughout the flight so any anomalies in the engine or fuel system can hopefully be found sooner. If a human can do it, I would imagine a computer could automate the process. Likely wouldn't remove the need for the pilots to do it anyway, though; redundancy and reliability and all that.
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    They did it according to the article, but 200kg was seen as insignificant. I bet it is hard: imagine driving 100 miles and them trying to gauge from the fuel used if there is a leak that lost you 200ml.
  • markdown 4y ago
    > usually the Pilot Monitoring FTFY. It's a common misconception in the general population that the Captain always flies the plane and the FO supports them. There's always a pilot flying, and pilot monitoring. The roles are usually decided before the flight by the Captain and have nothing to do with who is Captain and who is First Officer.
• relix 4y ago
  Make it broader - before take-off, pilots enter the expected destination (or expected distance). During cruising, computers keep track of how much fuel is being used (lost) per unit of time, and projects forward to see if they can still make their expected destination or not. If the number does not reach within expected margins, then show an error. This protects against leaks, but also miscalculation of fuel needed by the pilots, misfueling, or efficiency loss somehow.
  • tlb 4y ago
    Garmin G1000 units (popular in small planes) show this, as a circle around the current position, including fuel reserve. However, it depends on an accurate fuel level, which is mostly dead-reckoned from integrating fuel consumption. Measuring the actual fuel level in wing tanks is imprecise and the sensors sometimes get stuck and give bogus readings. Perhaps the big innovation needed is accurate fuel quantity measurement.
    • cjrp 4y ago
      Commercial airliners, and even some GA planes, have an accurate measure of fuel consumed using a fuel flow transducer.
      • tlb 4y ago
        Indeed, but that system will report nothing unusual when there's a leak directly from the tank, or in the pipe between tank and flow sensor (which I think is usually near the engine, downstream of a fuel pump) or if the tank wasn't filled to spec. Any sensor has a failure rate. If the probability that a sensor has failed isn't dramatically lower than the probability of a leak, then the pilots will do just what they did in the incident and assume a bad fuel sensor reading rather than a leak. Another failure mode of fuel tank sensors is short-circuiting and blowing up the plane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800
    • avereveard 4y ago
      I think a plane can measure an approximation of weight loss from its own airspeed and angle of attack, won't give you exact weight measurement because weight at take off is an approximation, but might give a estimate of weight loss. Depends on the precision of the aoa sensor tho.
  • spuz 4y ago
    Fortunately this functionality is now in place in all Airbus aircraft thanks to this incident. I suspect the same is true on most commercial aircraft.
• larsga 4y ago
  This is why a graph of a quantity over time is much superior to just seeing the realtime number. Had they had a graph of fuel remaining they would have been able to see that fuel level had started dropping faster. In monitoring IT systems seeing metrics like this over time is super valuable.
• lbriner 4y ago
  It's not very surprising. The computers are relatively basic by desktop standards and the time taken to develop a system securely means that many "obvious" things as seen from the armchair don't exist irl. Also, like most engineers, you don't necessarily add systems for every conceivable thing that could go wrong. If you think about how many times this has happened against the millions of plane-miles travelled, you can see why it wouldn't necessarily have been high on the list.
• speg 4y ago
  Isn’t that what they added, from the article: > Meanwhile, Airbus and the French Directorate General of Civil Aviation worked together to produce a recommended service bulletin modifying the Flight Warning Computers on A330 and A340 aircraft, allowing them to warn of possible fuel leaks by continuously comparing the planned fuel with the actual fuel on board.
  • marze 4y ago
    Missed that. I wonder if it is implemented now.