Re:Pentagon: Trillion-Dollar Jet on Brink of Budgetary Disaster
by swasheck on Thursday March 22, 2012 @12:41PM
(#3740610)
Really? Who faults someone else for being distracted by an inability to breathe? I know that they're trained for high-stress situations but when it's the fault of the equipment in the first place, own up to it.
Re:Pentagon: Trillion-Dollar Jet on Brink of Budgetary Disaster
by ajross on Thursday March 22, 2012 @01:15PM
(#3740797)
It's not a finding of legal fault. It's a statement about whether or not things need to change in the aircraft design. The oxygen system (presumably, obviously I didn't design it) isn't inherently redundant. If it fails (because Stuff Always Breaks) there are existing procedures the pilots are presumably trained on. The article lists two: an emergency backup (probably a second tank in the cockpit?) and the old standby of "dive to lower altitudes so you don't need oxygen, dummy". The finding was that these options would have been sufficient if they were used, so the design of the aircraft isn't deficient.
Obviously the software bug should still be fixed, and probably pilot training needs to be updated.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-oxy...
"Though they acknowledged the oxygen failure, Air Force investigators said the crash was Haney's fault for being too distracted by not being able to breathe and failing to either reduce altitude and take off his oxygen mask or to activate the emergency backup oxygen system."