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 essentially a complete opposite of what conclusions of the report say.
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 evidence, that crew decision making including those on the in-flight conference call, lack of oversight for the Hazardous materials program, and lack of adherence to maintenance procedures for hydraulic servicing were substantially contributing factors.
They note further down that "The 355th FGS hazardous materials program (HAZMAT) program suffered from insufficient manning and frequent supervision changes at times relevant to the mishap." Basically, they had a barrel of hydraulic oil that sat outside and no one took care of it.
Also interesting is the 6 February 2025 incident, where another aircraft, barely a week after the one that crashed, had the same issue. They tested it inside a heated hangar, then outside in the 15F cold where they reproduced the weight-on-wheels sensor malfunctions, then brought it back in and drained the hydraulic fluid...there's a TON of water in those lines! I'm more familiar with industrial hydraulics in factories and earth-moving equipment, not with aviation...but we have water separators because a few drops of water can be enough to mess with the servo valves when you're near caviation limits. "...approximately one third of the fluid retrieved from the [landing gear] was water" is NOT RIGHT.
Also, I chuckled on reading "...the barrel tested with more than 1024 parts per million (ppm) particulates, which is more than double the allowable limit for particulates in hydraulic fluid... It is important to note that the test does not accurately measure contaminates above 1024ppm, so the contamination was potentially far greater than 1024ppm"
Gives strong "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" vibes!
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
Thanks for breaking that down. None of that surprises me and it's basically what I was expecting. This report gives a glimpse into the reality of the US military behind the propaganda facade and the massive margins for error stuffed with money.
well, why not? we need a good politician to make it illegal for ice to form on an airplane, that would fix the whole thing. also, make it illegal to ever get sick. Checkmate, human illness.
somewhat sensationalistic?! The article clearly tries to give the impression the pilot was on the call:
> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected
Knowing the quality of media these days, it wouldn't surprise me if it CNN just got it really wrong, but also wouldn't surprise me they'd do some brazen lie for clicks.
Edit: Reading the report, it seems like you, dear fellow HN commentator, got it wrong in this case, sorry to say :) Seems indeed the pilot itself was on the call:
> The mishap pilot (MP), assigned to the 354th FW, ejected safely before impact. [...] The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers. The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action
You omitted an important part of the sentence (in italics below):
> 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.
So it was the SOF on the conference call, relaying information to and from the pilot over the radio. This is more clear if you read the sequence of events on pages 7-10.
Not that it makes that much of a difference. Either way, he's up there waiting for the engineers on the ground to troubleshoot the problem.
SOF initiates Conference Hotel procedures, FYI. It's a (rarely used) checklist in their book. SOF is the pilot sitting in the tower to liase with ATC and handle emergencies from an ops perspective.
I think there's just some nuance to the scenario. The pilot wasn't directly on the call, but was participating in the call with the flight supervisor relaying the information.
I'd compare it to being in the room with someone on a conference phone call and they're relaying the conversation to you and them both ways. I would still say you were participating in the call even though you weren't directly on the call.
Also, he did initiate the call so "F-35 pilot held" is imprecise, but not totally wrong. Either way, the pilot was in an active tech support session with the plane engineers, making this one of the most intense tech support calls in history.
And, of course, CNN only links to their own articles. Why bother linking to the actual report? The rise in sites that only link to themselves 99% of the time really frustrates me.
Journalism's failure to adopt linking to sources etc in the internet age is kind of infuriating. I get it, back in physical newspaper/magazine days, linking wasn't possible, and it takes a while for new norms to change and habits to form, but articles have been internet-first for well over a decade at this point. It should be completely unacceptable not to have linking to sources whenever relevant. I'm not sure I have ever found a news article that makes finding the original source or subject of the article easy. Certainly not on mainstream news outlets.
I read the article (twice) and I still have the impression the pilot was in fact the one in the conference call
Opening line:
> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected
Am I illiterate or misreading it?
> After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot got on a conference call with engineers from the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, *as the plane flew near the air base. *
Is this actually some insane weasel-wording by CNN? "We never said the pilot (he is in fact a pilot) was the one flying the jet, we just said 'as the plane flew', not 'as he flew the plane', using passive voice, so we're not wrong - but it was another pilot flying the plane"
> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF)
"MP" is the pilot
> A conference hotel is a call that can be initiated by the SOF to speak directly with Lockheed Martin
engineers to discuss an abnormality/malfunction not addressed in the PCL (Tab V-13.1, 14.1, 15.1,
16.1, 17.1). While waiting for the conference hotel to convene, the MP initiated a series of “sturns” with gravitational forces up to 2.5Gs, as well as a slip maneuver (i.e., left stick input with
full right rudder pedal) to see if the nose wheel orientation would change (Tabs N-12, BB-201-
02). Upon visual inspection, the MW reported no change to the nose wheel (Tab N-13).
The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin
were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME)
So the pilot was, in effect, on the call, even if not directly on the phone. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing an F-35 pilot had radio comms with the SOF who was on a phone line. It's a layer of indirection, but the pilot was essentially exchanging info in real time with the conference call. Its not a stretch to colloquially say that the pilot was "in the conference call"
> 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.
I read this as "The pilot initiated a conference call, but was put on hold [i.e. not actually in the conference call in any meaningful way]." So he was both on and not on the conference call.
The Zen Koan of the Mishap Pilot. Sounds like an Iron Maiden song.
To clarify because everyone is confused here. The report is a little vague and information is buried in a couple places. Using PDF page numbers
> "The MP responded “14.5” ... and then opined a “conference hotel” was appropriate for this situation (Tab N-12)." (pg. 13)
> "The MP, utilizing the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF) in the air traffic control (ATC) tower, initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin (LM)" (pg. 8)
> "The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME) on the line ...no transcript is available because the call was made on a personal phone rather than the legal voice recorder in the air traffic control tower" (pg. 13)
in the last statement, he means that the SOF was informing the MP that the SOF was on the conference call and would relay information. The mishap pilot (MP) was speaking to the supervisor of flying (SOF), almost certainly via radio. He asked the SOF, in the control tower to set up a conference call. For reasons, maybe of expediency or technical failure, or norms or something, the SOF made that call on his personal cell phone. The MP was not 'on the phone' but the SOF would have primaily functioned as a relay between radio and phone. The purpose of the call was to get information from the pilot to the engineers and from the engineers to the pilot. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate* means he doesn't need to cognitive load of actually listening as the SOF and engineers think through what to do and decide on a plan. He needs to fly the plane and provide information necessary to help figure out how to aviate.
If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.
I suspect that in the non-public version of this report there is more discussion of the decision and alternatives to doing that call on a personal cell phone for two reasons. (1) As noted in the report it means that conference isn't recorded and a transcript is not available to the investigators (thats shocking to me). (2) Detailed aircraft systems information, which is highly controlled, is being discussed on an open line.
* Funny enough, the third time the report defines SOF, they have a typo "supervisor of lying" (pg. 36)
> If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.
Um, actually, they were talking to a mic. And the mic converted the noise... /s
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
basically that and the knoll's law on media accuracy:
> Knoll’s law of media accuracy is the adage that “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.
"After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot got on a conference call with engineers from the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as the plane flew near the air base."
Did I misread that? I thought it meant an air-to-ground call, which I suppose is not that unheard of: I've definitely seen air accident videos saying the pilots were trying to debug in the air with engineers in the loop.
*edit: never mind, I misunderstood your comment. I thought you meant the article was clickbait.
Thank you. If I cannot even trust one of the substantial parts of the headline to be true, then my interest to read or even care about such an article is reduced to almost zero.
The report actually says it could have landed. A week later, another F35 at the same base had the same problem, it landed with its nose gear 6 degrees off center and the pilot barely noticed.
Basically, Lockheed Martin engineers told the air force to attempt re-centering with touch-and-go landings, but didn't realize that this could mess with the weight-on-wheels sensors and cause it to switch flight modes.
> 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.
The call was being relayed to the pilot by the flight supervisor. While he wasn't "on" the call, I think it's fair to say he was "part" of the call. He's still getting live tech support and trying to trouble shoot the plane while flying it. He had an intermediary but I don't think that totally changes the scenario.
Very different scenario, but flying my puddle jumper one of the first times after getting my license, once I took off from an airport in Connecticut and was about to cross a large body of water, my exhaust temperatures spiked really, really high, essentially indicating the engine was seconds from melting. But it didn't.
So of course I felt it was a sensor issue (especially since it sounded/felt great), but luckily with the equipment on board I managed a call to the flight school, who put me in touch with the mechanic. I circled above an airport as he pulled up the maintenance logs, we discussed what I was seeing, he noted that there had been a report of a sensor issue that had been squawked, so we concluded I should feel safe to fly straight home.
At the time it felt insanely cool to be able to be doing that WHILE flying the plane. While an unfortunate outcome for this particular pilot, as an elite pilot, part of me thinks when this cropped up part of him was like: "ahh right, this is why I'm top dog"
This kind of stuff happens all the time. Especially if you ignore a controller instruction. They'll have a number for you.
But really there's a ton of small, unmanned airfields (some in peoples backyards!) that have a number you can call to operate things like the runway papi lights. Call to order a burger to go. Or just call to talk to Fred, the owner, to see how his day was.
As long as you can safely operate the aircraft, in the pattern, there's nothing stopping you from using your cell or your radio or starlink to contact ground. Just always make sure you're in communication with any air traffic controllers operating in that space.
> Five engineers participated in the call, including a senior software engineer, a flight safety engineer and three specialists in landing gear systems, the report said.
I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage but the consequences are life and death. Of course, the pilot probably felt more stressed.
I don't think there was ever a risk of the plane crashing with the pilot still in the cockpit, despite the fact that the headline sort of leads people to that conclusion.
The pilot could eject at any time. Still dangerous, but more of a debugging session to avoid other similar costly in the future than a Hollywood-like "if we don't solve this now the pilot dies"
Ejections are pretty rough, and occasionally career or even life ending. So there would be a lot of pressure on the engineers to try to avoid it. Plus, this plane is very expensive. The cost is multiple times the average lifetime earnings of a typical person. It's not entirely wrong to say that they were attempting to save the life's work of multiple people.
The pilot could eject at mostly any time, not if the plane starts spinning uncontrollably though. Also, the plane can become very dangerous to what may be on the ground: if the pilot looses control and must eject it may not always be in a safe place to crash. Or even worse, the plane may continue to fly some distance and crash at a very different place than expected. So yeah, very stressful for everyone involved.
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.
Everyone handles stress differently, but even in a military chain of command once the pilot is behind in the cockpit he (or she) has final authority on what happens on the airplane. If a pilot calls to ask for help, they are asking for advice. Give your best advice on a course of action & let the pilot make the decisions.
Currently on a production promotion outage right now and reading this while we wait for some caches to be purged to see if it fixes things. Not quite the same and consequences here are much less than what those guys had to do. Still sucks either way...
This is one of the reasons why I don’t call myself a software engineer. Very few of us are actually doing anything resembling engineering. I’d have been like, “I can’t reproduce this production bug on my local system,” tagged the issue with ‘needs more info’ and moved on to something else.
On the other hand, I call myself a software engineer because I manage risks and benefits very well. Civil engineers, on the other hand, could hardly be called engineers. Every year they kill people. In my field, someone kills a person and they become a Wikipedia article.
In a good engineering and a safety culture, a death should never be considered the mistake of a couple individuals. Mistakes are always because of a process failing.
So as a pilot you can't override the software to stop it from "thinking that the plane is on the ground" mode?
Something similar happened recently with A320 when it didn't want to land on an airfield during emergency unless it was flown in a special mode. But F-35 doesn't have that?
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 automatically correct for it.
With Alternate Law the pilot loses most protections, but the plane will still try to protect against self-destruction. The plane no longer protects against being stalled, but it won't let you rip the wings off.
With Direct Law all bets are off. Controls now map one-to-one to control surfaces, the plane will make no attempt to correct you. All kinds of automatic trimming are lost, you are now essentially flying a Cessna again. The upside is that it no longer relies on potentially broken sensors either: raising the gear while on the ground is usually a really stupid idea - until the "is the plane on the ground" sensors break.
So no, a "Boot in safe mode" isn't as strange as it might sound at first glance. It significantly improves safety during day-to-day operations, while still providing a fallback mechanism during emergencies.
Fly-by-wire aircraft have changeable “flight laws” that correspond to different levels of computer intervention to mitigate situations incompatible with controlled flight.
Think of it as various stability control modes in a modern car. Likely the aircraft needed to be put in the least restrictive flight law mode as a workaround.
"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.
Yeah, when I saw that it was related to WoW sensors I was reminded of a chat that I had with an experienced aviation engineer a few years ago when we were considering adding them to the UAS I'm working on. "Every system I've ever worked on that relied on WoW sensors has had some kind of unexpected adverse event due to the sensors either triggering when they weren't supposed to, or not triggering when they should have. If you can figure out a different way to do what you're trying to do, please do."
I know the 737 allows the pilot to override that (force the wheels to raise even if the airplane thinks it's on the ground). I think most airliners do. I can't find a good succinct reference though.
That's kind of funny. Most fighter jets have an emergency override for the gear so you can use gravity or maneuvers to drop them to a down and locked position even during hydraulic and electrical failures. I can understand not being able to bring the gear up, but getting the gear down should be very easy.
I've crashed an RC helicopter because of a similar software issue. Rotorflight is an OSS flight controller, and it has an internal mode for tracking if the vehicle is on the ground or not that isn't always quite accurate at the margins. If you're touching the ground and it's not in ground-handling mode, the I-term in the PID loop winds up really quickly (because the input isn't producing the expected rotation rate) and flips your model on its side.
Betaflight (flight controller for drones, which rotorflight is based on) has a similar function called "air mode" which is common to either disable or set to a switch for aerobatic drones so that they'll still have full rotation rates at zero throttle.
I was told there is so much automation on those planes, the pilot does little flying. I always assumed they were kept busy going through their compliance trainings.
Am I the only one thinking that it's time for something like an R2D2? Presumably it could get into some crammed spaces and thaw things out of needed. I'm sure it's a stupid idea, BTW, but a fun one )
It's a fun idea. Though it would have to be a really small R2-D2 that could work from the inside.
The fictional R2-D2 had a big advantage of being in vacuum so it could work from the outside, without disturbing the airflow, and without having its work disturbed by the airflow.
Envisage what happens at 900km/h in atmosphere, if R2-D2 tries to lift up an exterior wing panel to troubleshoot a blocked line?
Everyone in these comments making quips about software is missing the elephant in the room, where the heck did that water in the hydraulic system come from? Pretty much any hydraulic fluid for outdoor use will suck up a lot of water so as to prevent situations like this so this clearly isn't a teaspoon or even cups of condensation problem.
Hydraulic fluid is very hydroscopic. It will happily suck the moisture out of the air if it is exposed long enough. This is why you don't use half empty bottles of brake fluid. I suspect that the fluid was left in opened containers for too long before being installed in the jet, allowing it to load up on water.
Water boils/evaporates off from oil based fluids in normal operation. Hydraulic fluid additives don't suck up water like brake fluid, they just mix with it if present, and they can't mix with all that much. If these first two things weren't true it would have huge implications for the design of all sorts of things. If hydraulic fluid could mix with a lot of water we wouldn't be reading this story.
I assume these jets use skydrol. I'm only casually familiar with it but unaware of it having special water related properties that differ from normal petroleum products.
Considering they relieved a pilot of command for ejecting when his F-35 become unresponsive, now they make them sit on conference calls. That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.
Ejecting from an airplane is no joke: 18g of force leaves 20-30% with spinal fractures, and ejection seats have an 8% mortality rate[1]
It seems to me that continuing flight with inoperative/damaged landing gear while you discuss alternatives with engineers is the safest option. Burn fuel, make a plan, let people on the ground mobilize to help, and eject when you've tried what you can and it truly becomes the safest option.
It makes you wonder if it would be possible for ejection seats to have a safer bailout mode. Sure, the "compress your spine" mode is definitely appropriate during a wartime situation where someone has shot your wings off, but is it really required when a mechanical failure leaves you unable to land yet in a more-or-less stable flight at a reasonably low speed? Perhaps a 6g ejection might be more appropriate in those cases?
Any military pilot has what, 2 or max 3 ejections even in best case scenario before they have to be retired due to medical reasons? If given army lets them actually fly another one.
Its the last resort, lesser of 2 evils situation, not some cool trick hollywood may make you believe.
> That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.
Definitely not. Ejecting is very risky. If the plane is possibly fixable you would much rather spend the time trying to calmly debug it to get it back to a point where you can land, rather than risk the possibly career ending physical injuries that can come from ejecting.
You also want to maneuver the plane into an area where it’s safer to crash.
The eject button isn’t the safe way out of every situation.
The other pilot situation you brought up isn’t so simple, either. A pilot who panic ejects before attempting to properly evaluate the situation is a risk not only to themselves but to people on the ground. Flying one of these planes is an extremely rare privilege reserved for a select few who have demonstrated their abilities and judgment to an extreme degree. It’s not a job for life and they can’t risk having someone who has demonstrated panicky judgment occupying one of the few spots that could be filled by a long line of very competent candidates.
Upon first reading the headline I was thinking it was some sort of test flight. Nope, poor guy was just trying to fly and ended up forced into a high-stakes troubleshooting tree while on a conference call, as if there's not enough on your mind in a fighter cockpit.
I don't know how many human-manned gens of aircraft are left, but my first inclination is to think a remote-control fallback option wouldn't be out of line here if the security could be done right.
Remote control for what? That doesn't really help in the case of a serious mechanical failure.
There are probably several more generations of crewed tactical aircraft left. Autonomous flight control software is decades away from being able to handle complex missions and remote piloting can only work when you have secure, reliable, high-bandwidth communication links. The concept of operations for the next few generations will rely on manned/unmanned teaming where drones are sent forward to do most of the fighting and the manned aircraft hang back slightly but still within line of sight to act as control nodes.
> But those attempts failed to recenter the nose wheel and resulted in both the left and right main landing gears freezing up and not being able to extend fully to attempt an actual landing.
> At that point, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s computer systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.
And there wasn't a way to override that? I get that "manual mode" may not be a thing for a SaaS product that isn't critical, but there not being an immediate way to turn off the "drive mode" is quite surprising.
Potentially it happened so quickly the pilot had no way to respond before they lost control of the aircraft and had to hit the eject?
Still you'd hope transitions between major operation modes could have some manual confirmation. Is there some essential reason the aircraft has to automatically transition to 'automated ground operation mode' when it thinks landing is complete? Could you not just expect the pilot to punch a button to do it instead?
For airliners, it's critical for the aircraft to know when it's on the ground because it kicks on autobrakes, and unlocks the thrust reversers for landing.
I'm very curious what the reasons would be for a military aircraft
Readit News
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 essentially a complete opposite of what conclusions of the report say.
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 evidence, that crew decision making including those on the in-flight conference call, lack of oversight for the Hazardous materials program, and lack of adherence to maintenance procedures for hydraulic servicing were substantially contributing factors.
They note further down that "The 355th FGS hazardous materials program (HAZMAT) program suffered from insufficient manning and frequent supervision changes at times relevant to the mishap." Basically, they had a barrel of hydraulic oil that sat outside and no one took care of it.
Also interesting is the 6 February 2025 incident, where another aircraft, barely a week after the one that crashed, had the same issue. They tested it inside a heated hangar, then outside in the 15F cold where they reproduced the weight-on-wheels sensor malfunctions, then brought it back in and drained the hydraulic fluid...there's a TON of water in those lines! I'm more familiar with industrial hydraulics in factories and earth-moving equipment, not with aviation...but we have water separators because a few drops of water can be enough to mess with the servo valves when you're near caviation limits. "...approximately one third of the fluid retrieved from the [landing gear] was water" is NOT RIGHT.
Also, I chuckled on reading "...the barrel tested with more than 1024 parts per million (ppm) particulates, which is more than double the allowable limit for particulates in hydraulic fluid... It is important to note that the test does not accurately measure contaminates above 1024ppm, so the contamination was potentially far greater than 1024ppm"
Gives strong "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" vibes!
>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
well, why not? we need a good politician to make it illegal for ice to form on an airplane, that would fix the whole thing. also, make it illegal to ever get sick. Checkmate, human illness.
What?
somewhat sensationalistic?! The article clearly tries to give the impression the pilot was on the call:
> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected
Knowing the quality of media these days, it wouldn't surprise me if it CNN just got it really wrong, but also wouldn't surprise me they'd do some brazen lie for clicks.
Edit: Reading the report, it seems like you, dear fellow HN commentator, got it wrong in this case, sorry to say :) Seems indeed the pilot itself was on the call:
> The mishap pilot (MP), assigned to the 354th FW, ejected safely before impact. [...] The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers. The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action
Page 35 from https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....
> 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.
So it was the SOF on the conference call, relaying information to and from the pilot over the radio. This is more clear if you read the sequence of events on pages 7-10.
Not that it makes that much of a difference. Either way, he's up there waiting for the engineers on the ground to troubleshoot the problem.
I'd compare it to being in the room with someone on a conference phone call and they're relaying the conversation to you and them both ways. I would still say you were participating in the call even though you weren't directly on the call.
Also, he did initiate the call so "F-35 pilot held" is imprecise, but not totally wrong. Either way, the pilot was in an active tech support session with the plane engineers, making this one of the most intense tech support calls in history.
Opening line:
> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected
Am I illiterate or misreading it?
> After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot got on a conference call with engineers from the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, *as the plane flew near the air base. *
Is this actually some insane weasel-wording by CNN? "We never said the pilot (he is in fact a pilot) was the one flying the jet, we just said 'as the plane flew', not 'as he flew the plane', using passive voice, so we're not wrong - but it was another pilot flying the plane"
> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF)
"MP" is the pilot
> A conference hotel is a call that can be initiated by the SOF to speak directly with Lockheed Martin engineers to discuss an abnormality/malfunction not addressed in the PCL (Tab V-13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 16.1, 17.1). While waiting for the conference hotel to convene, the MP initiated a series of “sturns” with gravitational forces up to 2.5Gs, as well as a slip maneuver (i.e., left stick input with full right rudder pedal) to see if the nose wheel orientation would change (Tabs N-12, BB-201- 02). Upon visual inspection, the MW reported no change to the nose wheel (Tab N-13). The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME)
So the pilot was, in effect, on the call, even if not directly on the phone. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing an F-35 pilot had radio comms with the SOF who was on a phone line. It's a layer of indirection, but the pilot was essentially exchanging info in real time with the conference call. Its not a stretch to colloquially say that the pilot was "in the conference call"
I read this as "The pilot initiated a conference call, but was put on hold [i.e. not actually in the conference call in any meaningful way]." So he was both on and not on the conference call.
The Zen Koan of the Mishap Pilot. Sounds like an Iron Maiden song.
> "The MP responded “14.5” ... and then opined a “conference hotel” was appropriate for this situation (Tab N-12)." (pg. 13)
> "The MP, utilizing the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF) in the air traffic control (ATC) tower, initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin (LM)" (pg. 8)
> "The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME) on the line ...no transcript is available because the call was made on a personal phone rather than the legal voice recorder in the air traffic control tower" (pg. 13)
in the last statement, he means that the SOF was informing the MP that the SOF was on the conference call and would relay information. The mishap pilot (MP) was speaking to the supervisor of flying (SOF), almost certainly via radio. He asked the SOF, in the control tower to set up a conference call. For reasons, maybe of expediency or technical failure, or norms or something, the SOF made that call on his personal cell phone. The MP was not 'on the phone' but the SOF would have primaily functioned as a relay between radio and phone. The purpose of the call was to get information from the pilot to the engineers and from the engineers to the pilot. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate* means he doesn't need to cognitive load of actually listening as the SOF and engineers think through what to do and decide on a plan. He needs to fly the plane and provide information necessary to help figure out how to aviate.
If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.
I suspect that in the non-public version of this report there is more discussion of the decision and alternatives to doing that call on a personal cell phone for two reasons. (1) As noted in the report it means that conference isn't recorded and a transcript is not available to the investigators (thats shocking to me). (2) Detailed aircraft systems information, which is highly controlled, is being discussed on an open line.
* Funny enough, the third time the report defines SOF, they have a typo "supervisor of lying" (pg. 36)
Um, actually, they were talking to a mic. And the mic converted the noise... /s
But yeah, excellent comment here.
> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
basically that and the knoll's law on media accuracy:
> Knoll’s law of media accuracy is the adage that “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.
Did I misread that? I thought it meant an air-to-ground call, which I suppose is not that unheard of: I've definitely seen air accident videos saying the pilots were trying to debug in the air with engineers in the loop.
*edit: never mind, I misunderstood your comment. I thought you meant the article was clickbait.
Thank you. If I cannot even trust one of the substantial parts of the headline to be true, then my interest to read or even care about such an article is reduced to almost zero.
Of course it couldn’t land but still, tweaking stuff while flying was ultimately causing loss of control.
Basically, Lockheed Martin engineers told the air force to attempt re-centering with touch-and-go landings, but didn't realize that this could mess with the weight-on-wheels sensors and cause it to switch flight modes.
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.
Something, something, mote in your neighbor's eye, mumble, something...
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So of course I felt it was a sensor issue (especially since it sounded/felt great), but luckily with the equipment on board I managed a call to the flight school, who put me in touch with the mechanic. I circled above an airport as he pulled up the maintenance logs, we discussed what I was seeing, he noted that there had been a report of a sensor issue that had been squawked, so we concluded I should feel safe to fly straight home.
At the time it felt insanely cool to be able to be doing that WHILE flying the plane. While an unfortunate outcome for this particular pilot, as an elite pilot, part of me thinks when this cropped up part of him was like: "ahh right, this is why I'm top dog"
But really there's a ton of small, unmanned airfields (some in peoples backyards!) that have a number you can call to operate things like the runway papi lights. Call to order a burger to go. Or just call to talk to Fred, the owner, to see how his day was.
As long as you can safely operate the aircraft, in the pattern, there's nothing stopping you from using your cell or your radio or starlink to contact ground. Just always make sure you're in communication with any air traffic controllers operating in that space.
Dead Comment
I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage but the consequences are life and death. Of course, the pilot probably felt more stressed.
The pilot could eject at any time. Still dangerous, but more of a debugging session to avoid other similar costly in the future than a Hollywood-like "if we don't solve this now the pilot dies"
"The pilot then tried two “touch and go” landings, where the plane briefly lands, to try to straighten out the jammed nose gear, the report said."
#vibecoding
Now that's having standards.
Well, they are doing their tests in production so what else to expect?
https://imgur.com/a/yHM0e5e
Something similar happened recently with A320 when it didn't want to land on an airfield during emergency unless it was flown in a special mode. But F-35 doesn't have that?
What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?
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 automatically correct for it.
With Alternate Law the pilot loses most protections, but the plane will still try to protect against self-destruction. The plane no longer protects against being stalled, but it won't let you rip the wings off.
With Direct Law all bets are off. Controls now map one-to-one to control surfaces, the plane will make no attempt to correct you. All kinds of automatic trimming are lost, you are now essentially flying a Cessna again. The upside is that it no longer relies on potentially broken sensors either: raising the gear while on the ground is usually a really stupid idea - until the "is the plane on the ground" sensors break.
So no, a "Boot in safe mode" isn't as strange as it might sound at first glance. It significantly improves safety during day-to-day operations, while still providing a fallback mechanism during emergencies.
Think of it as various stability control modes in a modern car. Likely the aircraft needed to be put in the least restrictive flight law mode as a workaround.
Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS
EDIT: Remembered Airbus exists
I wonder if the F-35 has a similar gear override.
Betaflight (flight controller for drones, which rotorflight is based on) has a similar function called "air mode" which is common to either disable or set to a switch for aerobatic drones so that they'll still have full rotation rates at zero throttle.
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Are you sure? I can’t seem to find any references to any such incident.
https://zoomescaper.com
The fictional R2-D2 had a big advantage of being in vacuum so it could work from the outside, without disturbing the airflow, and without having its work disturbed by the airflow.
Envisage what happens at 900km/h in atmosphere, if R2-D2 tries to lift up an exterior wing panel to troubleshoot a blocked line?
Even car maintenance doesn't work like that anymore. There's almost nothing you can do just by crawling around and messing with the parts there.
(I'm aware Zoom meeting limit is 40 minutes)
Water boils/evaporates off from oil based fluids in normal operation. Hydraulic fluid additives don't suck up water like brake fluid, they just mix with it if present, and they can't mix with all that much. If these first two things weren't true it would have huge implications for the design of all sorts of things. If hydraulic fluid could mix with a lot of water we wouldn't be reading this story.
I assume these jets use skydrol. I'm only casually familiar with it but unaware of it having special water related properties that differ from normal petroleum products.
Glycols are a different story.
It seems to me that continuing flight with inoperative/damaged landing gear while you discuss alternatives with engineers is the safest option. Burn fuel, make a plan, let people on the ground mobilize to help, and eject when you've tried what you can and it truly becomes the safest option.
[1]: https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2021/04/06/top...
Its the last resort, lesser of 2 evils situation, not some cool trick hollywood may make you believe.
Definitely not. Ejecting is very risky. If the plane is possibly fixable you would much rather spend the time trying to calmly debug it to get it back to a point where you can land, rather than risk the possibly career ending physical injuries that can come from ejecting.
You also want to maneuver the plane into an area where it’s safer to crash.
The eject button isn’t the safe way out of every situation.
The other pilot situation you brought up isn’t so simple, either. A pilot who panic ejects before attempting to properly evaluate the situation is a risk not only to themselves but to people on the ground. Flying one of these planes is an extremely rare privilege reserved for a select few who have demonstrated their abilities and judgment to an extreme degree. It’s not a job for life and they can’t risk having someone who has demonstrated panicky judgment occupying one of the few spots that could be filled by a long line of very competent candidates.
I don't know how many human-manned gens of aircraft are left, but my first inclination is to think a remote-control fallback option wouldn't be out of line here if the security could be done right.
There are probably several more generations of crewed tactical aircraft left. Autonomous flight control software is decades away from being able to handle complex missions and remote piloting can only work when you have secure, reliable, high-bandwidth communication links. The concept of operations for the next few generations will rely on manned/unmanned teaming where drones are sent forward to do most of the fighting and the manned aircraft hang back slightly but still within line of sight to act as control nodes.
Dead Comment
> At that point, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s computer systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.
And there wasn't a way to override that? I get that "manual mode" may not be a thing for a SaaS product that isn't critical, but there not being an immediate way to turn off the "drive mode" is quite surprising.
Still you'd hope transitions between major operation modes could have some manual confirmation. Is there some essential reason the aircraft has to automatically transition to 'automated ground operation mode' when it thinks landing is complete? Could you not just expect the pilot to punch a button to do it instead?
I'm very curious what the reasons would be for a military aircraft
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