DAC Press Release (1st March 2293)
Douglas Aerospace Corporation prides itself on providing airlines and operators with safe, tried and tested aircrafts. We are appalled to learn of the death of Mr. Armitage, and our deepest condolences go out to his friends and family.
The aircraft flown by Mr. Armitage, the B3707, is the latest evolution of the B-3X series and our competitor to the Strauss AX-58. The B3707 uses bespoke composites and engine technologies to achieve better fuel efficiency compared to its competitors. Our developments in aerospace technology provide economic benefits for cargo and passenger flights in the hypersonic regime, as well as reducing ozone pollution compared to our competitors. One of these developments used by our B3707 includes the use of lightweight servos and moving parts within its maintenance tunnels to reduce the weight of its bulkheads and permit manipulation of the center of mass during flight. This reduces the needed amount of runway for takeoff and allows for efficient operation in all flight regimes, as well as giving the aircraft granular control over how it bleeds the heat of its skin during the thermally intensive stages of hypersonic flight.
All cockpit crew, including but not limited to captains, first officers, flight engineers, and navigators, are carefully trained on how to operate the aircraft during all stages of flight, which includes knowing when the maintenance tunnels are accessible by human crew. Additionally, AOHA-compliant warnings and hazard signs are provided at maintenance access points to prevent flight crew from being exposed to moving machinery and high temperatures. We would like to clarify that Douglas Aerospace Corporation does not put a price on safety features, and that DAC is not responsible for personal injuries caused by crew negligence.
CAA Investigative Wing, Addendum (8th March 2293):
Further investigation of the B3707-300C involved in Federal Operations Flight 813, and the flight crews' files, revealed that Mr. Armitage had been trained in the B3707-100 whose maintenance tunnels remain fixed and safe to access during all stages of flight. Additionally, hazard warnings were absent from the maintenance entry points, contrary to DAC's 1st March press release, nor do training manuals mention the maintenance tunnels.
Excerpt from the official B3707-300C Crew Operating Handbook (updated 6th April 2293):
If any persons are known to have entered the maintenance tunnels during an unsafe phase of flight, the cockpit crew is advised to pull all circuit breakers associated with the tunnel servos, and (if applicable) commence a flight level change to FL<300 below M.94 before attempting to extract the missing persons from the tunnels.
Abstract
Federal Operations Flight 813, commenced 28th February 2293, was a scheduled international cargo flight operated by Federal Operations, carrying classified assets from EGLL to KJFK. The flight landed Douglas Aerospace Corporation in controversy following an incident with the systems of the involved DAC B3707-300C aircraft. While Federal Operations Flight 813 was in hypersonic cruise, flight engineer Ross Armitage began an unscheduled inspection of the maintenance tunnels of the Douglas B3707-300C after a failure by the autopilot to capture a navigation beacon. The intent of Mr. Armitage was to check the internal wiring of the B3707's radio receivers to ensure that instrument navigation could be relied on for the rest of the flight and that ILS could be used at the destination. Three minutes after Mr. Armitage entered the maintenance tunnels, the cockpit crew lost contact with his comms device, and lost his vital signs shortly after. After the aircraft landed one hour and thirty minutes later at KJFK, a search crew began a systematic scan of the B3707's internals. Half an hour later, the search concluded, with Armitage's remains deemed 'found, but unrecoverable from the interior of the B3707.' Within twelve hours, the CEO of DAC William Ortberg was contacted by FAA officials.Abstract
On the 3rd of August, 2301, British Airlines Flight 330, a scheduled passenger flight carried out on the Douglas B3707-300P, took off from London Heathrow Intl and began climbing to 70,000ft. Enroute to John F. Kennedy Intl and leaving British airspace, the aircraft made its last known contact with ATC 20 minutes after takeoff. Nearly three hours later, expecting to reach land, the crew's visual survey found the aircraft still travelling over water.
Preamble
A DAC-2280 inertial navigation system (INS) contains an inertial navigation unit (INU) that uses feedback from an aircrafts' instruments to determine its current location. In normal flight, the DAC-2280 will use absolute references like satellite (GPS) and radio (VOR/DME) to get the aircraft's true position and feed it into the aircraft's primary navigation computer. In the absence of absolute references, the INU will take over and continue extrapolating the coordinates of the aircraft using on-board gyroscopes and accelerometers until radio/GPS contact can be re-established. The DAC-2280 INU is rated to remain accurate to within a mile over the course of eight hours.
The B3707 is equipped with a triple-system configuration; three independent INS systems are installed in the cockpit, providing control over the aircraft's navigation to the pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer. In a triple-system configuration, each INU will deviate separately over time. To bolster accuracy, most INS systems are programmed with a triple-mix system that averages the result of each unit and prioritizes the two closest units in result to avoid a bad unit hindering the navigational accuracy of the others.
Press Release (DAC 2279-01-05)
The DAC-2280 INS uses tried-and-tested principles that have been refined since the dawn of aviation to maintain an RNAV and RNP specification of <0.1 even in the event of radio and GPS failure, permitting aircrafts fitted with DAC-2280s to continue navigation even in the worst circumstances
Accident
An inspection of the BA330 flight logs shown cascading failures in its navigation and communications system. In the case of BA330, analysis of the software used by each DAC-2280 revealed a bug which caused the navigation units with the closest position estimates to contribute the least during triple-mix, resulting in the aircraft quickly deviating from its flight path. This occurred following failure of its radio and GPS systems, causing the aircraft to fall back on its INS. By the time the aircraft reached its top of descent, its true position had drifted nearly 800 miles south-east of its estimated position.
