Wired article related to this:
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/possible-passengers-hack-commer...
States that there is a connection but it is supposedly one-way only. So no airgap. The article then goes on to note that a 777 uses a two-way bus but requires further authentication.
The sources are dubious (wired and telegraph). Experts quoted in the article claim its impossible, including the lead engineer of the boeing thrust management system:
> Whether it’s possible to create this condition by issuing a command from a passenger seat is a different matter, however. Soucie and others who WIRED spoke to agree with Boeing that this isn’t possible. But unlike Boeing, they provided clearer details explaining why. > >Peter Lemme, who was a lead engineer on Boeing’s thrust-management system for eight years until 1989, says the system provides the auto-throttle function that actually controls the engine thrust, and doesn’t allow the throttles for the engines to operate independently of one another.
You claim it's been "proven not to be the case". Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far I've seen nothing from this Roberts guy. Sounds like he's just full of shit.
If it was not extremely obvious that such an influence cannot exist with the law of physics that we understand, an investigation would be ongoing. The word “investigation” does not appear in the WIRED article, and “investigators” in the Telegraph article only refers to FBI.
The FBI is not qualified to tell whether an aircraft is so obviously immune to the defects that Roberts claim to have exploited that the investigation is an open-and-shut case. They don't like it when people plug into things they aren't supposed to plug into, and this is what they are accusing him of.