Spanair flight JK 5022 may have crashed because the airline's computer was infected by malware.
Spanair flight JK 5022 crashed with 172 on board, moments after taking off from Madrid's Barajas Airport on a scheduled flight to the Canary Islands on August, 20, 2008. 154 passengers died in the accident.
The airline's central computer which registered technical problems on planes was infected by Trojans at the time of the fatal crash and this resulted in a failure to raise an alarm over multiple problems with the plane.
The plane took off with flaps retracted, something that should have been picked up by the pilots during pre-flight checks or triggered an internal warning on the plane.
Pilots had abandoned an earlier take-off attempt. The day before, two other problems were reported. If the airline's central computer was working properly a take-off after three warnings would not have been allowed.
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