Look, the chances are pretty slim that any of us will ever feel 100% at ease on an airplane. You’ve either got a screaming baby behind you or a fat person hogging the armrests and all the peanuts. Alternatively, your PA was having a bad day and booked you on a Malaysia Airlines flight.

Either way, keep your fingers crossed. Oh and add this new piece of information to your worry list:

A military plane made by Airbus crashed in Spain last week, after three of it’s four propellors stopped working properly. The cause of this catastrophe?

Spanish investigators suspect files needed to interpret its engine readings had been deleted by mistake.

The new A400M aircraft’s control systems are heavily automated, thus any technological glitch could send the planes plummeting. So let’s ask the question – if a software glitch can bring down a plane and there is thus more and more need for ground control to access planes in the air (just imagine if the guys at air traffic control could have taken over control of the Germanwings flight, or MH370), then hacking the systems is going to become a possibility.

More and more people will be needed for the job, creating an easier way for hackers and terrorists to gain access.

Charming thought, isn’t it?

A source confirmed to the BBC that the A400M’s “torque calibration parameters” had been “accidentally deleted during a software installation process ahead of the plane’s first flight”. Accidentally?

Here’s how the propellors work:

Each engine is run by a separate computer called an Electronic Control Unit. The ECUs take the pilot’s inputs and make the engines they control respond in the optimum way. The parameter files are used by the ECUs to interpret sensor readings about the turning force generated by each engine – the torque – which is used to make the attached propellers spin. Without the files, the ECUs cannot make sense of this data.

The crash killed four people and grounded every A400m around the world, but Airbus has said it has “complete confidence in the A400M, and we are delighted to fly our demo as planned” at the Paris Air Show next week.

[Source: The BBC]