There been quite a bit of chatter on this in some of my aircraft security
discussions. The following were our conclusions---

The original article that is the basis of the news articles is in Spanish
and the interpretation in the English press is somewhat limited. Based on a
native-speaker’s translation, this is what is going on--

The infected ground system computer is not considered a cause of the crash
by the investigators, but might have prevented the crash through
serendipity. It is being brought up by a court case in Spain that is trying
to establish a broader legal liability. Because the computer was infected,
it was slow, so ground technicians were avoiding using it and they didn’t
notice something that they should have noticed anyway and that would have
grounded the airplane for a reason unrelated to the crash. Instead the
ground technicians disabled some of the alarms on the aircraft in order to
let it takeoff. Unfortunately, the pilots then made a critical mistake on
take-off that also was unrelated to the reason for grounding the aircraft,
but was not detected by the aircraft due to the alarm disabling.
•	The direct cause was that the pilots attempted to take off without
setting take-off flaps. 
•	They were rushing because they'd had a technical issue with a stuck
heater on a pitot tube, and returned to the terminal after previously
taxiing to the runway and completing the take-off checks. So they
accidentally skipped the critical check that the flaps were deployed when
they lined up to take off the second time. 
•	There's a take-off configuration alarm that is supposed to alert the
pilots, but it wasn't working. 
•	It wasn't working because the engineer removed the circuit breaker that
powered it, in order to turn off that stuck heater on a pitot tube. 
•	The pitot tube fault had been noted on previous flights, so should have
flagged a warning on the airline's fault monitoring system. 
•	The procedures of Spanair are to log incidences right away whenever they
are detected. Three accumulated incidences and the plane is grounded.
•	Two incidences had been found the day before the crash. One incidence was
detected on the same day of the crash.
•	However, the technicians did not enter the incidences into the system
right away, because the system was too slow (due to the malware)
•	The ground system did not trigger any alarm on the same day because the
incidences had not been entered by the technicians. The plane was deemed
airworthy, and then the accident happened due to the multiple causes
described above.


Original Message:
-----------------
From: Loebl, Andy loeblas@xxxxxx.gov
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:14:39 -0400
To: safety-critical@xxxxxx.york.ac.uk
Subject: [sc] aircraft maintenance practices



Computer viruses may have contributed to Spanish 2008 plane crash 
Aug 20, 2010, 10:13 GMT 


Madrid - Computer viruses may have contributed to the Spanair passenger
plane crash which killed 154 people in Madrid two years ago, the daily El
Pais reported Friday. 

The Spanair central computer which registered technical problems in
airplanes was not functioning properly because it had been contaminated by
harmful computer programmes, according to an internal airline report quoted
by the daily. 

The MD-82 plane had three technical problems, a situation which should have
prevented it from taking off. 

The plane en route to the Canary Islands veered off the runway and burst
into flames immediately after take-off on August 20, 2008. Eighteen of the
people on board survived the accident. 

Experts are still investigating the causes of the crash, which has been
attributed mainly to the fact that the plane's wing flaps and slats were
not deployed to help it take off. 

A mechanic and an airport maintenance chief have been indicted as suspects
in the case. The final report by the investigating commission is due in
December.


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