The captain of the imperilled Qantas flight reveals his horrific experience of automation's dark side.
In this article published in 2017, the captain of the imperilled Qantas Flight 72 reveals his horrific experience of automation’s dark side: when one computer “went psycho” and put more than 300 passengers at risk.second officer Ross Hales straps into the right-hand-side seat beside Captain Kevin Sullivan in the Qantas jet's cockpit. "No change," Sullivan tells him in his American accent.
Flight attendant Fuzzy Maiava was slammed into the aircraft's ceiling during the nosedives. He relies on visits to the gym to cope with his physical and psychological injuries.In the cockpit, Sullivan instinctively grabs the control stick the moment he feels the plane's nose pitch down violently at 12.42pm . The former US Navy fighter pilot pulls back on the stick to thwart the jet's rapid descent, bracing himself against an instrument panel shade. Nothing happens. So he lets go.
The events of October 7, 2008, are not merely about how three Qantas pilots found themselves fighting to save a passenger plane from itself. It serves as a cautionary tale as society accelerates towards a world of automation and artificial intelligence. A few metres from Yeo, Maiava lies on the rear-galley floor after hitting the ceiling. On the way down, he hit the galley bench and was thrown against the meal-cart storage. Regaining his senses, Maiava sees blood gushing from the off-duty Qantas captain's head. He lies unconscious on the floor. The captain's wife – also a senior Qantas flight attendant – begins to regain consciousness.
In the cockpit, over-speed and stall warnings keep ringing in the pilots' ears as the plane recovers to 37,000 feet above the Indian Ocean, about 150 kilometres west of the small Western Australian town of Exmouth. Sullivan and Hales have no idea what caused the plane to dive. The computer system does not tell them. Sullivan hand-flies as they begin responding to fault and warning messages.
In a conventional aircraft without flight-control computers, pilots are responsible for keeping it within the bounds of safe flying. In a passenger jet such as the A330, the computers have unfettered control over the horizontal tail – 3000 pounds per square inch of pressure that can be moved at the speed of light. It enables the aircraft to descend or climb. For reasons unknown to the pilots, the computer system has switched on "protections".
"The cards of life, in your poker hand of life, those cards have been taken off the table. I've got some pretty crappy cards now," Sullivan says. Instead of suppressing thoughts of QF72, he believes it better to admit it has affected him and seek help. "I can still play those cards, I have to. Otherwise, as we see with returning defence force personnel, police, first responders, there is the potential for depression, substance abuse or self-harm.
But it fails to bring closure for QF72's captain. The inability to pinpoint the trigger leaves a crucial question unanswered. The air-data unit was taking good information in and pumping out extreme data. "They don't know why it did that. And there is no result," Sullivan says. "Everything that I have done in my life was tested that day. A good pilot makes his own luck but in this case we got lucky.