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
it's better to evenly distribute water throughout the fluid, than to have it accumulate in a low point
Or if you leave a barrel of hydraulic fluid outside until it is partially water and it's not easy to notice when you are handling it.
But brakes can get really hot. Passenger brakes can easily get over the boiling point of water. Keep braking long enough and adding enough heat, and they'll get over the boiling point of brake fluid under pressure.
Thing is, brake fluid is incompressible. Brake fluid vapor however is very much so a compressible gas. Even more so: the water in the brake fluid has an even lower boiling point then that.
So stomping on the braking quickly isn't going to cause much of a problem. But if your riding the brakes down hill for a long distance with 12 year old brake fluid in hot Florida summer on very heavily loaded car? That... might get you into a spot of trouble.
I wonder if some YouTuber has done some experiment to see just how bad fluid had to get before a typical driver could notice.
It's not worth the expense to manufacture and it's not worth the risk. Not when a litre of DOT4 is $20 and that only needs replacing every 3 years at an aggressive schedule for passenger cars.
Larger vehicles you can purchase a brake fluid tester, but most of the really large ones I know use air brakes anyways.
What?
It's a mockery of Soviet politics and party loyalty, but many of the errors apply to all bureaucracies.
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.
Possibly my greatest disappointment with the internet.
We’d like to cite sources but journalists don’t cite theirs.
Now consider this: When you know journalists are spreading a lie, you can show the article and the scientific study which says the opposite, because people always claim that it isn’t the study cited by the article.
Case in point: I remember this article from the BBC titled “It’s proven, women are smarter than men. [In a scientific study about multitasking, …]”
The scientific paper published the month before on the same subject had an abstract that finished with “…, therefore we cannot conclude that women are smarter than men.”
I was particularly angry because it participated to the 2017 wave, and it was about multitasking, and once again it said women are 5s faster on a 170s task (with 15s stddev), but the study didn’t underline the accuracy of the two tasks in parallel, which was worse for women than men.
Anybody who mocks me about competing with girls, should respond why the BBC need to publish a petty news article about women being smarter.
If you pet barks, do you still call it a cat? Of course not.
Links make it journalism. Not linking makes it reporting. They should not be considered synonymous.
The point is, people who should know better keep calling the likes of CNN journalism and those who don’t know any better keep believing they’re consuming content and forming understanding based on journalism.
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....
What does Depth of Discharge have to do with anything?
Boeing has an emergency response program called “Conference Hotel” (USAF) or called “Conference X-Ray” (USN/USMC) to provide units with engineering and test pilot expertise during airborne emergencies. This 24 hour a day service is available by calling (866)543-5### toll free or commercial (314) 232-9###. Callers may also contact the regional DSN operator at DSN 693-1### and ask to be connected to the Boeing STL operator at (314) 232-9###. It can also be used overseas via long distance phone lines or MARS radio patches. When the Boeing operator answers, callers must identify themselves and request Conference Hotel or Conference X-Ray assistance. The operator will ask for specific information to identify the appropriate Boeing personal to respond. Conference Hotel or Conference X-Ray is available to assist in airborne emergencies only. Do not utilize this capability as a part of pre-mishap drills.
F/A-18E/F Aircraft Crash Rescue; Fire Fighting Information; January 2006
> 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.
> 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
And
> 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 - Page 2
I quoted from the Page 35, you quoted from the Page 2, not confusing at all of them to have very similar stuff with slightly different meaning, all in the same document :) Thanks nonetheless for the additional context!
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"
"At 21:12:52Z, the SOF informed the MP, “Alright the engineers uh are not optimistic about this COA but, extremely low PK [probability kill, meaning the probability this would fix the issue], but we’re going to try anyway is a touch-and-go on the runway, mains only, do not touch the nose gear, uh lift back off in all cases and have the uh have Yeti 4 reconfirm the nose gear position once your safely airborne.”"
No need for this if the pilot was on the call directly.
> 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.
"though the SOF" implies a middle-man, but I imagine that's because you don't want literally hook up a conference call directly to the cockpit. That being said, seems like the pilot was effectively on the conference call.
Unless you want to suggest I don't trust the report?
https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....
You can argue over whether he was “effectively” on the call because someone was summarizing it for him per what I quoted.
I just think it’s worth nothing he was not “on” the call the way someone is traditionally on a conference call.
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 highly misleading? Or did they simply not follow basic reporting protocol?
Are there? What are they?
Pretty sure you meant to use the past tense here: "There _were_ journalistic standards..."
> 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 accurate to what CNN was reporting. It's simplified a bit, but it's not misleading to me.
I mean, I guess if you want to nit pick and suggest "No the pilot wasn't literally on a phone and there was an intermediary in between" or some such, but the report makes it seem like CNN is accurate.
https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....
Every single story is like this, every one, and f-them for not linking to the source documents.
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.
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.
And don't skimp on the maintenance budget. Sounds like they had too much to do, too few people to do it, leading to not taking proper care.
If a programmer, engineer, or pilot needs to think about when the aircraft will transition to "on ground" mode, and the answer is "when the weight on wheels sensors say the landing gear is not fully extended", that's simple. You can even extend this to reason about what might happen when the landing gear is not fully extended, or what happens if it does a belly crash-landing with the gear not deployed, or if it hops, etc. Furthermore, it's a perpetual signal, rather than an edge-triggered condition: You don't have to develop and remember and think about a state machine that transitions to the on-ground state, or worry about what happens if the flight computer gets reset, you can check the sensor state at any instant.
Yes, there are a myriad of checks and alternate modes you could do, or information items you could communicate to the pilot - radar altimeters, GPS altimeters, barometric altimeters, indicated airspeed, speed over the ground, weight on wheels, landing gear deployment, accelerometer/gyro/IMU history, stick position, flight model response to control inputs, brake response, ABS wheel speed sensors (if they have those, which I doubt), cameras...the list goes on.
With more data, you can potentially be more accurate if one or more sensors malfunctions. "Aircraft On Ground" could actually mean the aircraft is on the ground, rather than the abstract state that occurs when the weight-on-wheels sensors say the landing gear is not fully extended. But the more complexity you add, the more it gets difficult to understand!
I deal with this all the time - I'm an industrial controls engineer, working with robots and CNCs and assembly equipment rather than aircraft. But the machines still need to reason about the world. It's an important judgement, borne out of years of experience, to decide when you need to have a laser distance sensor or inductive proximity switch that confirms the part is present in the fixture. Sometimes you can reason about it and assert that if the part was in the previous fixture and the machine cycled, it must be in the new fixture, sometimes you need to put together multiple sensors or live information like CNC spindle torque to confirm that you're actually cutting steel. But usually, when you've got an operator or maintenance tech 600 miles away, looking at the machine you programmed 2 years ago, calling on the phone to ask why the machine is stuck on "Step 34: Wait for Part Present in Fixture B, then start CNC job O312" (or conversely, why it's skipping past this check and cutting air if the sensor is covered in swarf) everyone involved in reasoning about this equipment for the next decade would rather it be just a digital part present sensor.
This works in industrial automation where you can demand that the equipment's environment be precisely controlled, I'm less convinced that it will work well in fly-by-wire aircraft or (more pertinent to the average human) in level 3/4 self-driving cars. Simplicity has value, complexity adds cost..but is this cost worth the risk when there's a pilot who now has a thoracic spine fracture or a pedestrian crossing the road? I don't know.
Isn't there an arrested-landing equipped version of the F35? Could this same problem happen with a bolter?
> 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”.
Something, something, mote in your neighbor's eye, mumble, something...
> "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.
(This argument also failed to convince my mom my teenage band didn’t suck)
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.
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.
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.
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.