[saywhatagain]

A sister ship (9M MRG) to missing MH 370 (9M MRO) experienced In 2005, failure of an operating software of the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU),

a Malaysian Airlines B777-200 (9M-MRG) was on a flight from Perth to Kuala Lumpur when it experienced a failure of its navigation system. The airplane suddenly climbed to FL410, then dropped 4000 feet, then climbed 2000 feet. The pilots flew the airplane manually back to Perth. Australian authorities investigated the incident. They determined that the failure was in the "operating software of the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU), a device that supplies acceleration figures to the aircraft's flight computer." The device was manufactured by Honeywell and contained the fourth version of the operating system. A review of the software showed that the error did exist on the first three versions of the software, but had been suppressed by other features of the software. These other features were removed during the transition from the third version to the fourth version.

[meatloaf]

Why did the accelerometer fail?

[publius911]

Reminds me of one of the earliest versions of the Airbus, on a test flight at an air show in France.
The computer was programmed absolutely to prevent the pilot from overriding its control of the aircraft, and it worked perfectly.
Under computer control, the Airbus ran out of runway and the brand new aircraft crashed into the trees and burned, killing their chief test pilot and a half dozen Airbus employees.

And we thought software bugs in desktop PCs were bad!