Firsts
Because I’m a Kiwi, I can still remember the first time the All Blacks won a series against the Springboks in South Africa. It was 1996 and since the great and huge rivalry began in 1921 no All Black team had managed to do it. Although the All Blacks are unique in having a winning record against every nation they have played, this eluded them for 75 years. As the then captain, Shaun Fitzpatrick, came off the field in the last match that clinched that series and walked through the tunnel the late Don Clarke, one of the greatest fullbacks of the game, hugged him crying “thank you for achieving what so many generations of All Blacks have been trying to do for years.” he said.
Many firsts are like that. When Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest Hilary described it as elation to have “Knocked the bastard off.”, as he put it. He had climbed many mountains, but this wasn’t just any mountain, this was a huge first.
Sadly, not all firsts are like this.
Spanair flight JK5022, that crashed in August 2008, killing 154 of it’s 172 passengers has popped back onto the news radar with a first. It seems a major contributing factor in the crash was a computer virus. A trojan in the airline warning system computer caused it not to log warnings that there had been three similar technical problems in the same device on that aircraft. By the time mechanics tried to open the computer to log the three incidents manually they realized it was non functional because of the trojans. By then the aircraft had crashed.
A major mechanical reason for the crash was the flaps and slats, which were retracted at the time of takeoff. An on-flight alarm should have gone off to warn the pilots, but did not. It is still being investigated as to whether this has any correlation with the virus.
There has been years of bleating over the years about viruses eventually causing damage to real world systems. Most of it hysterical.
But let the record show it started in August 2008 and it was tragic. The final report from investigators of flight JK5022 is due in December.
It seems enviable this trend will grow. Hopefully it will be slowly. It is interesting to note the pilots seem to have put more faith in the computer system checks than their own manually visual checks before takeoff. If they weren’t in the habit of taking the computer as gospel truth they may have averted the tragedy.
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