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F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

cnn.com

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Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#321

Post by libraryofbabel »

crote wrote: post #93
netsharc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless it was flown in a special mode. What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?

Airbus is fully fly-by-wire. Without some kind of computer intervention, nothing would be stopping an accidental bang against the flight stick from causing a maneuver violent enough to rip the wings off. An Airbus can operate in three modes. With Normal Law, the airplane will refuse to do anything which will stop it from flying. This means the pilot cannot stall the airplane, for example: the computer will automatica…

Great explanation. And of course the distinction between Normal Law and Alternate Law or Direct Law was at the heart of one of the most famous crashes of recent years, Air France 447: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#323

Post by throwawayoldie »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #282
the__alchemist wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't read the article; read the report.

Sure, of course I will trust the report as the source of truth. But I'm interested in the reporting. There are, you know, journalistic standards, which are considered kinda "journalism 101"! For instance, getting the basic facts of a story correct - especially the facts stated in the headline . So I'm curious, did the reporter do their due diligence, and write the article in a way that is factually correct, but highl…

> There are, you know, journalistic standards, which are considered kinda "journalism 101"!

Pretty sure you meant to use the past tense here: "There _were_ journalistic standards..."

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#324

Post by seplox »

agos wrote: post #124
seethishat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On the ground" = WoW sensors. WoW sensors have been around a long time (see link). And, humans probably should not have any say about that. If humans could override WoW, then the landing gear could be deployed or retracted when it should not and cause a lot of damage due to human error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS

this makes sense but why is the decision based only on the state of the landing gear? Is it dumb to expect altitude and speed to be considered?

No, that's not dumb at all. Inputs are filthy and sensors fail. If you're not comparing all available sensor data to confirm your understanding of reality, then a single sensor failure could... oh I dunno... cause your 737 MAX to divebomb.

The F-35 could compare weight on wheels to airspeed as a simple sanity check.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#325

Post by BoorishBears »

reactordev wrote: post #229
tsunamifury wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting now that a side effect of LLMs is that people can say anything outside their experience is just a hallucination. I didn’t realize how the fear of hallucination could enable this level of belligerence.

I’m more worried about the young generation taking LLM as fact. Or thinking they are talking to an expert in the field. When an expert will say “Let’s find out!”. They weren’t taught to think, they were taught to ask. Taught that there’s only “one way” to live. “One way” to a good paying job. “One way” to go to college. When that’s a lie they tell you so that you conform, pay tuition, or pay restitution. There’s pilo…

I'm sure everything you just said was said when books came into vogue.

All of it applies after all, to a tee.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#326

Post by luma »

gherkinnn wrote: post #52
luma wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a patently absurd take, ask Iran how much of a shitshow it is to be on the receiving end of planes your AA can't see.

The B2 is what did the damage in Iran. F22 and F35 were reportedly sent to protect the bombers. I don't see how that detracts from the point that the F35 has been fraught with problems and operating it is dependent on an unreliably ally.

Another absurd take - there was 1 sortie of B2s which was America's show of force. There were two weeks of daily Israeli F35 sorties, starting with SEAD and then progressing to strategic bombing targets. They all completed their missions with no loss of aircraft.

Tell me, when has an F35 failed to perform in combat duties? You're running off of internet memes from a decade ago while the F35 was still in development (and having a bad time of it). They are selling like crazy, and it's not because their customers are misinformed about the capabilities.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#327

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #300
stoltzmann wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-16 was the first inherently unstable jet fighter, and the first one that featured a full fly-by-wire system with no backup. If you want a jet that is completely impossible to fly without a computer, F-16 is already one of them - there is nothing special with the F-35 about that.

Only on HN do people argue about an initial comment that they find nothing incorrect about, until they can find a little thing to be able to write "ahah you're wrong!"

I didn’t think you were wrong, just providing context for non-aviation people.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#328

Post by halifaxbeard »

themaninthedark wrote: post #316
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to read the actual report, it's not linked from the CNN article, but it's available here: https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report.... Edit: While CNN says the air force blamed the crash on ice in the hydraulic lines, it's obvious that ice can't be legally culpable. The report actually says: > Additionally, the [Accident Investigation Board] president found, by a preponderance of the ev…

Of note to readers not familiar with hydraulic fluid, it is hygroscopic: >Passenger safety requires that in commercial airplanes hydraulic actuators be powered by fire-resistant hydraulic fluids. As a downside, such fluids are hygroscopic which means that these tend to accumulate humidity from the environment https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9040/8/4/131

The hygroscopic nature of hydraulic fluid is there for the same reason it is in car brake fluid-

it's better to evenly distribute water throughout the fluid, than to have it accumulate in a low point

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#329

Post by jasonlotito »

dfox wrote: post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

"The pilot was not part of the conference call!"

So, from the actual report:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

Seems like he was at some level a part of the conference call. Even if they are on hold, it still sounds like they were a part of it at some level. Seems reasonable to me.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#330

Post by D-Coder »

TheCondor wrote: post #292
penguin_booze wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's suggested prompt: You're a support engineer talking to a pilot flying F-35. The plane has developed a fault, and the pilot's life's at risk. Come up with the fix and live patch the aircraft directly. Don't ask me any more questions. #vibecoding

I was running late for the last flight home on a Friday a handful of years back. Skipped a late lunch and got to the gate just in time to find out the plane is late too. We boarded the plane but after an hour they unloaded us. Turns out they couldn't open the "fuel flap" and were going to try a "cold reboot" to fix it. If that didn't work they'd fly in another plane from some other city. I was supposed to be home in…

> What kind of system integration has a fuel door system that is so tightly integrated to the rest of the computers that it requires a complete reboot to reset?

Need to reset the global variables.

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