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  • Australian Flying

    Products & innovation

    Jun 14, 2019 5 minutes

    Kevin Sullivan and his crew lived to tell a tale. It’s a technical yet very personal story of struggle against automation and against trauma. It started a decade ago, but it’s not over yet. Perhaps it never will be.

    Sullivan was the captain of QF72 in October 2008, when the Airbus A330 VH-QPA went feral on he and his crew off the coast of Western Australia. Thanks to a faulty sensor, the in-built automation believed the aircraft was stalling, and immediately commanded a sudden nose-down pitch that was beyond the ability of any hand to perform. Then it did it again.

    It was the stuff of nightmares for any pilot, any cabin crew and any passenger: an un-commanded control response that the crew couldn’t explain. The violence of the moves tossed passengers and crew around the cabin,

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