It’s probably decent policy to simply fire any pilot who ejects. The cost of training a pilot is much lower than the cost of an aircraft and it will make people really think hard about whether they need to eject.
Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
211–220 of 508 posts
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#212In case anyone was wondering, he sent 109 million dollars into the great beyond.
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Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#213My dad was reprimanded for not following orders ejecting when the engine on his F-86 failed. He did the calculations and figured he could make the field, which he did. They said the pilot was far more valuable than the airplane.
Planes were cheaper then. I wonder if the higher costs of today's planes results in any pressure to try to save planes that in your dad's day would have been considered not worth the risk? An F-86 ranged from $180-$580k in 1950 dollars, depending on the model. That's around $2.4-7.8 million now. That's quite a bit lower than the statistical value of human life that is currently used by the government for regulatory a…
Out of curiosity, is there a source for the "statistical value of human life" at $13.1 million ?
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree, penalising people for making mistakes where procedures are bad tends to cover up root causes and causes more problems in the long term. After all, its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time?
> its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time? It’s a new plane! Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. That’s not appropriate for a mission critical role.
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Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a new plane! First flown in 2006. Introduced 2016.
This project needs scrapped. They tried to make it everything for everyone. Not practical. No danger of retiring the stalwarts anytime soon.
You have a good point in that it was supposed to replace all kinds of aircraft. That was kind of its thing.
“ intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft …”
One aircraft for the navy, marines and air force would save money was the thinking I imagine.
I remember the competition for the design many year ago (there was a Nova tv program) but haven’t been following too closely but it’s had issues filling all the roles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The book said that ejecting is the correct action when the plane is “unresponsive to the pilot’s commands“. This simple, straight forward statement turns out to be more ambiguous than they intended. Do you eject if the radio doesn’t change channel? No, that would be silly, even though the plane didn’t respond to your command to change the channel. The plane is still flyable without the radio! Common sense says that y…
> instead of penalizing him He wasn’t disciplined. But he was penalised. Which strikes me as the right balance given the facts. There are two kinds of jobs: those where the person’s employment is more important than their work, and those where it isn’t. This is the latter. He’s still getting paid. But he should not have this responsibility. It you’re making excuses after losing a plane when you shouldn’t have, becaus…
I’d argue that this is exactly who you want testing potentially malfunctioning planes? The alternative leads to jocks crashing into the runway when they desperately try to control a runaway plane.
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#217The JAGMAN (confidential legal investigation) and MIR (open, no blame aviation investigation) on this have been beaten to death by the retired military flying community on Youtube.
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not these fighter planes. They literally need both the propulsion and an active flight computer to fly stably. Without the flight computer, they are uncontrollable. Think balancing a pencil on your finger - if your finger is immobilized or loses control, that pencil will fall almost immediately. The plane's controls are much more complex and unforgiving. And without propulsion, they are just flying rocks. No gliding.
No. As long as it has electrical power and the flight controls are working it can remain stable and glide even with a complete engine failure. Of course the glide ratio is fairly low but it's totally possible for a skilled pilot to make a dead stick landing provided there's a suitable site nearby with acceptable weather conditions.
Is that true for those fighter planes? From a cursory investigation it seems like they’re not very flyable at low speeds without being in vtol mode.
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least one concept of it is that officers (and NCOs and maybe others) are expected to succeed when the 'book' is insufficient. Following the manual is not nearly enough. Warfare is chaos; unexpected things happen; the manual is one input but people are expected to take initiative and overcome problems with or without it. It's not extra credit, it's a baseline expectation for the job. Also, this person is a colonel,…
This and the fact that he didn't make the slightest attempt to work around it. He had a flyable plane with plenty of fuel, a functioning backup radio and instruments he could have verified primaries against or just switched to, and even failing everything else, he could have verified against what the tower saw on radar for speed, heading, altitude, etc...and then asked the tower to get him to his wingman, and then fo…
> HUD freaking out, that means I can't trust my instruments, that means I'm in immediate danger! PUNCH OUT!
Isn’t that indicative of what an absolute shitshow of a plane it is?
Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree, penalising people for making mistakes where procedures are bad tends to cover up root causes and causes more problems in the long term. After all, its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time?
> its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time? It’s a new plane! Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. That’s not appropriate for a mission critical role.
> Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering.
Huh, is that a specific thing for military pilots? Just watched the latest MentourPilot's video and there the french equivalent of the FAA found that the pilots were told to improvise too much, and should have followed the procedures better.
Isn't this a catch22 with hindsight based judgement?