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by michaelt 2624 days ago
Of course, even with triple-redundant systems failures can still occur.

Air France 447 [1] three independent air data systems, two of them failed due to environmental conditions

XL Airways 888T [2] three independent AOA sensors, two failed because the plane was washed without the right covers in place

US Airways 1549 [3] two independent engines, both disabled by bird strike at the same time (No fatalities)

Qantas Flight 72 [4] three independent inertial reference units, bug in voting system if a single sensor's output had multiple spikes 1.2 seconds apart (no fatalities)

An in the data centre, no amount of power-supply redundancy will save you if a technician pulls out the power cables on the wrong server :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#cite_ref... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways_Germany_Flight_888T [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72