Was Wi-Fi Behind the Boeing 777 Crash In London?
Last week, a British Airways Boeing 777 on final approach to London Heathrow touched down short of the runway. The landing gear failed on impact and the plane ground to a halt on its belly at the beginning of the runway. Initial findings revealed that the aircraft's throttles failed to respond to a request for an increase in power, which caused the aircraft to come up short. Now, amid growing speculation about the effects of electromagnetic radiation, one woman is suggesting that Wi-Fi interference resulted in the problem.
The 777 relies on electronics for all flight controls, including the throttles. This enables computers on-board the aircraft to handle many of the details of flight, including fully-automated landings at many airports. In this case, when the landing system requested more thrust, the engines didn't comply. The pilots noticed this and manually shoved the throttles forward, but the engines still didn't respond.
Author and pilot Nina Anderson, who wrote 'Worse Than Global Warming -- Wave Technology,' believes that ground-based Wi-Fi signals are the culprit here, interfering with the aircraft's electronics and causing the throttles to fail. Her book, published late last year, ties technology to the prophesied downfall of humanity in 2012, believing that electromagnetic waves will trigger Earth's magnetic poles to shift, causing a global catastrophe. Her latest theory, about the 777 crash, was made public in an Australian Air Cargo magazine, and, like the rest of her book, doesn't seem to have much basis in fact.
The real cause seems to be bad fuel picked up from the craft's last stop in Shanghai. Water in jet fuel sinks and has the potential to be picked up by fuel pumps in the wings when the craft tilts back at landing. Substitute water for fuel and you have a recipe for disaster.
The real kicker, however, is that Boeing 777's have landed at Heathrow hundreds of times with no similar issues, meaning if there is some design flaw in the craft why is it just appearing now?
From CNet.com.au and Aircargo Asia Pacific
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris Hann said 11:27AM on 1-22-2008
No, water in fuel sinks, fuel floats on water. The 777 has water separators that routinely capture and remove liquids other than fuel. I work in the noisiest WiFi environment possible, many APs sending full power, we don't even get interference on analog headphones, there's just not enough power. This article reminds me of Professor Mike Hennel's rush to blame software when Air France parked an A320 in the woods, turned out it was idiot pilot, though I don't expect that's the case here, the similarity the that bogus 'experts' get air time to pursue their favorite theory. If a cell phone in a plane does nothing and they can fly past megawatt radio transmitters with impunity then I don't expect the few microwatts that might have reached the aircraft from a WiFi AP could do anything.
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Chris Hann said 11:36AM on 1-22-2008
Oops. Misread that. The fuel/water description in the article is correct. But the 777 routinely deals with fuel contamination, it would have to be something very similar to fuel to escape the separators, but then it would mix instead of sitting in the tanks. AAIB and NTSB are looking at computer faults.
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Thom Lengyel said 11:55AM on 1-22-2008
We must understand, that an author is not an expert, unless they have a Degree in what they are writing about. A pilot is not an expert in electro-magnetic fields. An author has a book to sell. In Nina Anderson's case over sixty books on everything from diets to a 2012 dooms dayer. I will wait for an expert to really tell us... Looks like to me Nina is an expert on selling herself and her books.
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C.P HEAD said 12:33PM on 1-22-2008
Was Gordon Brown's aircraft equipped with Electronic Counter Measures? (starting up as the 777 crashed). ECM's are designed to interfere with and disrupt electronic guidance systems in missiles,by powerful radio transmissions.
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Richard B. Johnson said 3:15PM on 1-22-2008
Two simultaneous engine shutdowns could only occur if they were commanded to shut down. The probability of bad fuel getting to both engines at the same time is, for all practical purposes, zero. There was fuel on-board so a fuel exhaustion scenario can be ruled out.
So, how do you command both engines to shut down if the pilots didn’t do it? Easy, the flight-control system likely told the engines to shut down and they properly obeyed. Normal shutdown involves opening the guard on a guarded switch and then turning it off. Nowadays, such switches are not really switches, but addresses on a bus. Somehow the triply-redundant flight-control computers determined that the switches were turned off. Note that three identical computers, all running the same version of software, do not constitute a triple-redundant system! Boeing’s 777 website does not even discus this issue. Perhaps the flight-control system is not triple-redundant because it has mechanical override capabilities –except for the engines, of course, --oops!
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John said 5:13PM on 1-22-2008
Was it Gorden Brown or the new PM that was coming to the Airport?
Could it be that a EMP was used pointed ahead of his path to the aitport to knock out any road side bomb using a Cell Phone to trigger it?
The 777 was only 600' in the air at the time and with the wheels down that part of the plane is open so that a pluse could get into the wiring?
WiFi would not have the power to do this.
Someone should talk to the guy that was working on his Car at the time the 777 went over him. What was wrong with his car was it also hit?? He said it was a dead battery??
Somebody check if the path the PM took to the airport would line up with the 777 at the time it happened.
If it was a EMP they are never ever going to say so.
We are using computers way to much in places that they are not needed. We are risking lives on parts that a little static spark can destroy.
This kind of thing has happened to aircraft but it will never be in the news.
Remember the cops have things that can burn out electronics in the cars we have today.
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Walker said 4:37AM on 1-23-2008
I read this earlier, and couldn't believe it was considered a 'headline' at CNet. Basically, an obscure author struggling to sell her book on the dangers of wave technology, decides to use this plane crash as a springboard to sell more copies.
There is no "growing speculation" at all, only a growing number of media outlets prepared to sell-out by propagating a completely unfounded story which lacks any kind of evidence. Talk about cheap journalism.
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Martin said 1:54AM on 1-23-2008
The flight control computers only controls the flight controls eg ailerons, rudder etc. The Autothrottle Computers control the throttle position when in use. The throttle position provide the engines with thrust commands. The only computer that can shut the engines down is the one on the engine and that is only if the computer detects the engine has a serious fault. Virtually impossible for two engines to have the same fault at the same time. The only way to shut the engine down manually or by accident is by moving the Fuel Lever to Cut Off, and you can't do that by accident. No other system can command the engines to shut down. Its fail safe.
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Bill said 9:22AM on 1-23-2008
WiFi, ECM, cell phone, fuel contamination, EMP....You are all going to look pretty silly (along with BA extolling their "heroes") when it comes out this is simply a case of the pilot getting behind the airplane and unable to recover in time, possibly compounded by a single engine failure.
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