Malaybourne

[Gob]

An AirAsia flight from Sydney to Malaysia ended up in Melbourne instead when the pilot entered the wrong coordinates into the internal navigation system, an air safety investigation has found.

The Airbus A330 was scheduled to leave Sydney international airport at 11.55am on 10 March 2015, and arrive in Kuala Lumpur just under nine hours later.


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Instead, through a combination of data entry errors, crew ignoring unexplained chimes from the computer system, and bad weather in Sydney, it landed in Melbourne just after 2pm.

Melbourne airport is 722km southwest of Sydney. Kuala Lumpur is 6,611km northwest.

According to a report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) published on Wednesday, the problem occurred when faulty earmuffs prompted the captain and first officer to swap their usual pre-flight checks.

Ordinarily, the report said, the captain would conduct an external inspection of the plane while the first officer stayed in the cockpit and, among other tasks, completed the position initialisation and alignment procedures.

On this day, however, the captain’s ear protection was not available so he took over the cockpit tasks, which included entering their current coordinates, usually given as the coordinates of the departure gate, into the plane’s internal navigation system.

The report said that the captain manually copied the coordinates from a sign outside the cockpit window into the system, and that later analysis showed a “data entry error”.

Instead of entering the longitude as 151° 9.8’ east, or 15109.8 in the system, he incorrectly entered it as 15° 19.8’ east, or 01519.8.

“This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000km, which adversely affected the aircraft’s navigation systems and some alerting systems,” the ATSB said.

[oldr_n_wsr]

earmuffs, not just for keeping your ears warm.

[Burning Petard]

Just think how much fun we will all have when driverless cars are common. Data entry error cannot be programmed out.
As I quoted before--just when you think you have fool-proofed the system, somebody comes up with a better fool.

snailgate

[datsunaholic]

Oh, that should get good. Driverless cars with Google Maps for directions. Try to tell the car to drive to New London, CT from Baltimore, and end up in the Chesapeake when it tries to "swim" to Great Britain when it autocorrects to London, England.

[Lord Jim]

This reminds me of an old National Lampoon Radio Hour routine:

Fly beautiful Trans-Bulgaria Airways...

Remember our slogan:

"We Almost Always Get You There"...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Or the Grace L Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company

"Has anyone here been to Hawaii before"

"Yes? You uh you have? Good. OK, it's kind of liver shaped isn't it?"

[Bicycle Bill]

I can't remember where I saw it, but I once read that an older pilot claimed that because of advanced avionics and air traffic control there is no need to learn to navigate any more.  Just fly to where you think you're going, and once you're within two hundred miles get on the radio and call "Podunk area ATC, do you have me on radar?"

When they answer in the affirmative, you then request a vector and a handoff to Podunk approach control.

-"BB"-

[datsunaholic]

Well, I know Boeing removed the eyebrow windows from the 737 because they were mostly only there for Celestial Navigation, something that's virtually unused by anyone. Though as of a few years ago at least, customers could still order a 737 with them if they so chose. Most airlines filled them in because they caused glare. Even the lastest US Military 737s (like the P-8 Poseidon) don't have them. They were somewhat useful in tight, banked turns or for Military jets, for refuelling, but the glare issue mostly won out.

[Lord Jim]