Did any serious new information pop-up suggesting it was a system malfunction? (And it would have to be a pretty worrying and serious one, to throw people against the ceiling, and very, very bad for Boeing if it was so.)
If not, this is nothing more than clickbait.
> The captain later said they had briefly lost their instrumentation, then it came back all of the sudden.
The story, its consequences, (and even the torn ceiling pictures), read very much like this one from December:
under what circumstances is it acceptable for your instrumentation to go away? none is the answer.
If the event was caused by the instrumentation going away it's bad. If the instrumentation went away because of the event, that's also bad.
Instrument failures happen. That's why redundancy is built in.
> If the instrumentation went away because of the event, that's also bad.
That is bad. But not as bad a FBW system bug.
> That is bad. But not as bad a FBW system bug.
The event in question is better than the plane plummeting out of the sky and killing everyone. That doesn't make it ok for the event to have happened.
Were there any cockpit warnings? Full loss of instruments? Conflicting information displayed? Stall warnings with overspeed warnings? Altitude holding problems on autopilot? Erratic system inputs? Before and/or after the mishap?
It will take quite an input to push passengers to the ceiling, an acceleration well beyond what the FBW system will allow.
This particular article addresses none of those points, only repeating what the airline said.
So until new information emerges, this mishap reads like a fairly classic inflight turbulence encounter. See, for instance, this event from December:
"this reads like a fairly classic inflight turbulence encounter"
Case-in-point being the Emirates flight from December, with similar ceiling damage, and similar passengers/crew injuries.
> In the incident on Monday, passengers arriving in Aukland told local media that the plane quickly lost altitude, flinging those unsecured towards the ceiling.
> A passenger told radio network RNZ that “people flew through the air because they weren’t wearing their seatbelts”.
Like I said that doesn't mean it was turbulence - but the basic concept of keeping your belt on when seated would have likely prevented most injuries.