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Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exit door plug separation

(www.ntsb.gov:443)
165 points starkparker | 7 comments | 10 Jul 25 20:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.71s | source | bottom
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thomascountz ◴[10 Jul 25 21:46 UTC] No.44525985[source]▶
> We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the left MED plug due to Boeing’s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight necessary to ensure that manufacturing personnel could consistently and correctly comply with its parts removal process, which was intended to document and ensure that the securing bolts and hardware that were removed to facilitate rework during the manufacturing process were properly reinstalled.

A bit OT, but what a gorgeous whale of a sentence! As always, the literary prowess of NTSB writers does not disappoint.

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1. dlcarrier ◴[10 Jul 25 22:43 UTC] No.44526528[source]▶
My favorite NTSB-ism is "controlled flight into terrain", which means "crashed". This is as opposed to "uncontrolled flight into terrain", which means "fell from the sky".
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2. hectormalot ◴[10 Jul 25 23:01 UTC] No.44526667[source]▶
I think CFIT is appropriate. There’s loads of cases where pilots flew into a mountain due to lack of environmental awareness. Here’s a bizarre example: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lost-and-confused-the-cr...
3. scoot ◴[10 Jul 25 23:01 UTC] No.44526669[source]▶
Both result in a crash – the first due to pilot error, the second due to mechanical failure.
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4. FL410 ◴[10 Jul 25 23:22 UTC] No.44526818[source]▶
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. CFIT is intended to classify accidents where the aircraft itself was not causal. In any other case, it is assumed that there were mechanical or other aircraft-related factors that were contributory or causal.
5. ghushn3 ◴[10 Jul 25 23:30 UTC] No.44526866[source]▶
It seems pretty clearly describing a state + an outcome.

"(pilot control state) flight into (outcome of flight)"

One of those pieces of jargon that feels silly until you go, "Oh, actually, this makes a lot of sense when you deconstruct it."

6. gcau ◴[11 Jul 25 00:29 UTC] No.44527226[source]▶
It's a legitimate distinction, "they were in control" and "they weren't in control". If the pilots are on a collision course with a mountain, but are happily sitting there thinking they're going the other way, there's nothing wrong with the plane, and the pilots are in control of the plane. In contrast to a horizontal stabilizer failure, where the pilots aren't in control, and instead say their goodbyes for the cockpit voice recording.
7. SaberTail ◴[11 Jul 25 00:52 UTC] No.44527373[source]▶
CFIT is not necessarily pilot error. For example, if ATC vectored a plane without ground proximity warnings into the side of a mountain, that would also be CFIT.