On Friday, 3 October 2014 at 15:43:59 UTC, Sean Kelly wrote:
My point, and I think Kagamin's as well, is that the entire
plane is a system and the redundant internals are subsystems.
They may not share memory, but they are wired to the same
sensors, servos, displays, etc. Thus the point about shutting
down the entire plane as a result of a small failure is fair.
This "real life" example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
I just pick some interesting statements (there are other factors
described as well):
"temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a
result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals,
causing autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate
law;"
And as I can see it, all subsystems related to the "small
failure" was shut down. But what is also important information
was not clearly provided to the pilots:
"Despite the fact that they were aware that altitude was
declining rapidly, the pilots were unable to determine which
instruments to trust: it may have appeared to them that all
values were incoherent"
"the cockpit lacked a clear display of the inconsistencies in
airspeed readings identified by the flight computers;"
Piotrek
