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

(www.cnn.com)
278 points Michelangelo11 | 3 comments | 27 Aug 25 11:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.004s | source
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yellow_lead ◴[27 Aug 25 12:24 UTC] No.45038691[source]▶
> 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.

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airstrike ◴[27 Aug 25 13:29 UTC] No.45039409[source]▶
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"

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codyb ◴[27 Aug 25 13:44 UTC] No.45039579[source]▶
Doesn't ejecting from a plane potentially break bones? I think it's pretty intense. Good on the pilot for doing the debug session
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keepamovin ◴[27 Aug 25 14:31 UTC] No.45040255[source]▶
It risks career. 2 ejections and you won’t fly for the military any more.
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burnte ◴[27 Aug 25 15:11 UTC] No.45040824[source]▶
It depends on why and your medicals. There's not hard limit of 2.
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1. keepamovin ◴[27 Aug 25 15:33 UTC] No.45041122[source]▶
I guess trashing a couple hundred million dollars is a occasionally considered an issue

tho looking at how contracts have traditionally been funded you’d be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t

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2. hluska ◴[27 Aug 25 16:56 UTC] No.45042125[source]▶
It’s a massive issue - crashes are investigated and it’s not uncommon for a pilot to lose their jobs if they deviate from procedures. A few years back, a Marine Colonel was relieved of a prestigious command after being found to have ejected too early:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/31/pilot-of-f-35...

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3. LorenPechtel ◴[27 Aug 25 19:43 UTC] No.45044154[source]▶
Note that that was the third review. The first two exonerated him--the real problem was his helmet wigged out. His plane was actually flyable but it was lying to him. And the rule was if the plane is not responding properly to pilot commands below 6,000' AGL eject.