alt Hacker NewsBut what does it say about their QA or lack of it?
Just to be clear, I’m not faulting Airbus. I take issues with the shallow snark at Boeing. The JetBlue incident was serious.
Airbus isn’t immune to controversies , like AF447 or Habsheem air show crash in 1988
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As an aerospace software engineer, I would guess that, if this actually was triggered by some abnormal solar activity, it was probably an edge case that nobody thought of or thought was relevant for the subsystem in question.
Testing is (should be!) extremely robust, but only tested to the required parameters. If this incident put the subsystem in some atmospheric conditions nobody expected and nobody tested for, that does not suggest that the entire QA chain was garbage. It was a missed case -- and one that I expect would be covered going forward.
Aviation systems are not tested to work indefinitely or infinitely -- that's impossible to test, impossible to prove or disprove. You wouldn't claim that some subsystems works (say, for a quick easy example) in all temperature ranges; you would definite a reasonable operational range, and then test to that range. What may have happened here is that something occurred outside of an expected range.
In most capitalist organizations QA begs for more time. "getting to market" and "this years annual reports" are what help cause situations not here, not the working class, who want to do a good job.
a problem on 1 flight in a gazillion, and you complain about QA?
As software developers, we should perhaps refrain from criticizing aeronautical engineers' QA standards.