Title: What do Byzantine Generals and Airbus Airliners Have in Common?

Author(s): Dewi Daniels

Publication Event: Proceedings of the Thirtieth Safety-Critical Systems Symposium

Publication Date: 2022-02-08

Resource URL: https://scsc.uk/r1540.pdf

Abstract:

On 14 June 2020, all three primary flight control computers on an Airbus A330 shut down while it was landing at Taipei, Taiwan. The aircraft came to a stop only ten metres from the end of the runway. The cause was a problem well-known in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem, which was first described by Leslie Lamport in 1982. He presented a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem, along with a mathematical proof of the correctness of that solution. This paper describes what happened on 14 June 2020 and how Leslie Lamport’s solution would have avoided the incident.