Live data from Hacker News

Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

bloomberg.com

11–20 of 269 posts

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#15

Suprised they don't have a lessons learned portal. Would have saved some lives.

That's the sort of thing the NASA report system is for, though IDK the latencies involved in the system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Safety_Reporting_Syst...

> The Aviation Safety Reporting System, or ASRS, is the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) voluntary confidential reporting system that allows pilots and other aircraft crew members to confidentially report near misses and close calls in the interest of improving air safety.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#16
The headline is really confusing; I thought I was perhaps reading it wrong, but it's sort of impossible to read correctly until you realize they are talking about a separate incident than the well-known crash.

It would have been clearer if they had written something simpler, like "Lion Air 737 Nearly Crashed One Day Before Deadly Accident"

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#17

Is it possible for Boeing engineers to lose their professional status as a result of this situation?

Wouldn't a better point of view be: shouldn't we reëvaluate the items that allow self-certification and fund the FAA properly so that they can certify medium/large change themselves instead of letting the manufacturer?

Self-certification has a place, but it should always be accompanied by random checks and shouldn't be for anything large, critical, or first time through.

Edit: Better in that it helps solve what is largely a political and not an engineering problem.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#19
post #11

...

>In fact, I thought these crash recovery systems had to be written by 3 different teams in 3 different languages or architectures, and only activate when 2 of the 3 signal true. Or there's some manufacturer that does avionic software like this, I forget who.

Redundant systems with majority voting are common, and this can include multiple implementations of the same spec, but I'm not aware of any manufacturer that intentionally uses three different languages or architectures.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#20
post #8

> [T]hey got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit. That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat [...] Am I missing something here? Isn't it normal for off-duty pilots to ride in the jump-seat?

Riding dead head as a pilot is normal. They do it all the time to get back home or wherever their next flight is from. Being in the right place, and happening to know exactly how to deal with what would otherwise kill the pilot and all the passengers, is incredibly fortunate.

I suppose similar in terms of the right place a the right time would be the QF32 incident[0], where by chance there were two additional pilots in the cockpit; a check captain, and a supervising check captain who was training that check captain.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32

Post reply on HN