More Followon in Aviation Week

My Aviation Week came in today.  It has a full page article on the A400M crash in Spain.  Aviation Week is supporting it's earlier story, the computer engine control system screwed up, and shut down three or perhaps all four engines during or shortly after takeoff.  That will do it every time.  You need engine power on takeoff, you are close to the ground, and any loss of altitude means a crash.  Once you get up to cruising altitude, tens of thousands of feet, you have minutes before the plane hits the ground, minutes in which to get the engines back on line. 
  Airbus is really worried.  If the software problem is bad enough, the fix might require re-certification of the software, a lengthy (months long) process that would cost like crazy.  Airbus wanted to build, deliver, and get paid for, 23 new aircraft this year.  At say $100 million each, that's some real money for Airbus.  If they are all tied up re-certifying the engine control software, they won't get paid. 

Followon: Airbus A400M crash blamed on engine control software

According to Ars Technica, an airbus executive said that the engine control software was "misconfigured" during engine installation at the factory, and was responsible for the crash.  We think this means that some program changes that were supposed to be made at installation (for instance "remember this engine serial number" or "set engine hours to zero")  were not made, or were not made properly.  The executive claimed that this was not a bug in the code.
   Oh really.  Code that crashes an airplane ain't right.  Good code will keep the plane flying even if it is "misconfigured".  Aviation Week's report of a couple of weeks ago suggested that the engine control software shut off fuel to all four engines.  That should never happen, no matter what. 
   I wonder if the Ariane 5 software hackers were allowed to work on the A400M.  The Ariane 5 crash, some years ago, destroying the rocket and its expensive satellite payload happened when the engine control software suffered an arithmetic overflow and the program simply halted.  In the after crash investigation, it was revealed that the software spec required the program to halt after overflow.  The excuse was made at the time that this helped troubleshooting.  The programmers in the Ariane case did what they were told to do, with disastrous results.