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

by fourmii • 5 years ago

42 16 5 years ago

theguardian.com

wombatmobile• 5 years ago

I'm surprised there isn't a process to establish actual weight of the human payload before takeoff, such as

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.

cratermoon2• 5 years ago

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.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

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...

mogoman• 5 years ago

My dad mentioned to me once that back in the early days of commercial flying each passenger was weighed with their luggage

cratermoon2• 5 years ago

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."

tdeck• 5 years ago

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?

adaml_6232• 5 years ago

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.

jmchuster• 5 years ago

With the amazing solution being

The operator subsequently introduced manual checks to ensure adult females were referred to as Ms on relevant documentation.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

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).

akadruid1• 5 years ago

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.

donaldihunter• 5 years ago

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.”

adaml_6232• 5 years ago

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.

chuckleMuscle• 5 years ago

Link seems to be dead, but doc is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/604f423be90e0...

cafard• 5 years ago

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.

JazCE• 5 years ago

anyone know the country where "miss" is used for a child?

fireeyed• 5 years ago

Guess where a lot of outsourcing of cheap “soft-where” happens

Plane in 'serious incident’ after every Miss on board assigned child’s weight

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