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sam1714today at 9:34 PM1 replyview on HN

Like Boeing, there was organizational dysfunction leading to a direct safety issue.

During the development of the A380, the German and French sides were using different versions of the CATIA PLM software (i.e. CAD), which prevented people from looking at a single unified model of the plane. One concrete problem it caused was major problems with the wiring harnesses, which led to a 2 year delay in the program, and 3 early A380's which couldn't be sold. (Airbus kept one for test, the other two got sent to museums)

That manifested in this accident because the wing wiring was routed through the engine disk burst axes (a hazard which is explicitly accounted for) with insufficient redundancy. That created the dangerous situation where they couldn't turn off the engine after landing.


Replies

jacquesmtoday at 9:36 PM

> That created the dangerous situation where they couldn't turn off the engine after landing.

Which is vastly preferable compared to all of the dangerous situations just prior to that landing.

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