April 12, 2021
A software flaw caused by a language barrier led to a serious incident for an early morning Tui flight from Birmingham to Majorca in 2020.
All female passengers whose title was “Miss” were categorized as children instead of adults after a faulty software upgrade. This meant that their average weight used for take-off calculations was far lower than it should have been.
This error could have had an impact on take-off thrust, but luckily, the flight operation was not compromised.
Pre-take-off documents showed that the Boeing 737 jet was 1,244 kg lighter than it actually was after using 35 kg as the average weight of the females on the flight instead of 69 kg.
The Air Accidents Aviation Branch (AAIB) report on the incident stated that the flawed software, which was programmed in a foreign country, used “Miss” to refer to children and “Ms.” to refer to adult women.
The same report also stated that in this case, the difference in the calculation of take-off thrust was out by a measly 0.1%, ensuring the safe operation of the aircraft.
Investigators said that two other flights on the same day suffered from the same glitch, but were fixed by extra manual checks and another upgrade of the computer system.
<span style=”font-weight: 400″>For more information, you may view the <a href=”https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56690529″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>original story</a> from BBC. </span>
