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Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately it's the pilot's responsibility to do a visual inspection of the entire aircraft. Of particular importance are the propulsion components and the control surfaces. We can blame the ground crew for missing an item on the checklist, but the pilot should have caught it.

Those covers are red for a reason, so that they're easy to spot and remove. Furthermore, the ladder to climb into the cockpit is right next to the intake, and if you see one, you have to check the other side. How was it possibly missed?

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> How was it possibly missed?

Since you asked, here’s one idea:

- Did you notice the rain covers are present in the second photo in the article? I had to do a double-take because they’re very dark. I suspect they’re less obvious compared to other aircraft.

- Was the launch at night? If so, is the deck of this carrier appropriately lit wherever this plane was parked for inspection?

This is pure speculation. My point is you can have all the checklists in the world but bad design could contribute significantly to a process failure.

It sounds like this was a test flight of new equipment on a new carrier. I’d expect some design issues to be uncovered at this stage.

I thought everything that needs to be removed before takeoff needs to be bright orange/red?

...and flagged. It shouldn't just be a panel/plug, there should be a ginormous length of red webbing attached with a "you can't miss it" "REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT" text in white (on both sides of the webbing) as well. It's not like we haven't been doing that for fifty-plus years or anything. That was old news when I was in the service [mumble] decades ago and our quaint training films on type were nearly twenty years old at that point (which should be a clue right there that I'm Canadian).

Perhaps the millenials in charge of designing this most recent fighter tired of your grandfather's rain cover aesthetic, and modernized them to feature Hoefler Whitney and more muted colour palette. :-)

I mean, there are certain lessons that each generation seems to have to learn anew.

It just that one would expect this to not be one of them.

Someone tell Elon...

It looks red to me. And probably more contrast/color with actual eyes. That photo is during the day and bright behind it cameras aren't great at that.

The color in the image is misleading. They are very bright red. Honestly, I have no idea how this could have happened without at least two people simply not doing their job, at all.

The incident occurred around 10:00 GMT in the Mediterranean[1] so I don’t think it was dark out.

[1](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59323895)

I think this is not true in military aviation. I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

I don’t know who practices that, but it’s not a very professional approach. The only time I’ve known that to happen has been for quick reaction alerts, when it’s considered an acceptable risk to save time.

For normal operations the pilot doing their own check isn’t a lack of confidence in the ground crew, it’s the prudent, smart, and responsible thing to do when playing with people’s lives and very expensive aircraft. I’ve never known ground crew to get upset over it.

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It makes sense for something that you personally own and maintain yourself i.e. a Cesna. Do you expect Air Force 1 pilots to do walk around? Astronauts? Submarines?

These are mostly war machines that have to be scrambled asap, meaning the pilot is expected to jump in and fly. To alter that during peacetime would be silly, as you want to establish habits.

The pilots of Air Force One do in fact do pre-flight inspections and walks around, yes. I’ve seen them do it personally. All military pilots do their own pre-flight inspections, including checking inlets, exhausts, the undercarriage, and flight surfaces.

But don’t take my word for it, here’s a video I found as literally the first result when googling for it, showing a USAF F-22 pilot conducting a full pre-flight walk around inspection: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/149526/f-22-walk-around

Before saying something is the ‘stupidest thing’ you’ve ever heard, it might be worth first making sure you actually know what you’re talking about.

Most Air Forces are nowhere near as professional as USAF so they might be much less likely to be enforcing pilot pre-flight checks.

There are no shortage of horror stories about what is found when USAF pilots get deployed to train pilots in other Air Forces.

Unless you’re talking about dysfunctional developing world air forces like the Afghan Air Force I have difficulty believing that, and even then I’d question it. I can’t say I know how every single force operates, but I’ve seen a few African air force crews doing preflight preparations and in all cases the pilots did their own inspections. It’s really basic operational stuff.

The USAF is also not any more professional than other developed world and NATO air forces, who all have similar procedures in any case.

All pilots, no matter what aircraft they fly, do the pre-flight walk around. Too many people died by not doing it, so they do.

Ward Carroll has a detailed video demonstrating the F14 preflight check:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcuBmucjyUI

I've seen many pilots of my commercial aircraft (737 typically but A320 as well) do walk arounds. I even heard one say "I saw something funny hanging from the <something> so the maintainence crew has to come back and repair it."

Air Force Thunderbirds: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2012/march/31/m...

(Which means I’m only partially right, but I admit mostly wrong. I’ve also seen strong evidence that the Blue Angels do something similar, but can’t quickly find a reference.)

Ah yeah, the Blue Angels do the same. It’s all part of the show for them, with the aircraft parked in view of the public and a big deal made of the pilots walking to the aircraft and there being a smooth and rehearsed synchronised starting process.

I don’t really understand why they do it, to be honest. Most other military display teams, including the famous Red Arrows and Frecce Tricolori, just do regular startups with all the usual preflight checks.

I can’t speak to the Thunderbirds, but I know that on the Maintenance side getting accepted to the Blue Angels is HARD. They are extraordinarily picky, and the application process is demanding.

The people who go tend to be the ones everyone hates at the front line squadrons because they are the sticklers for doing things right and putting in the work to do it right AND fast. Most others will cut corners on one or the other without oversight.

>I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

If that's true, that sounds kinda weird. Military aviation should run on procedures and checklists with redundancies.

When someone hands you an unloaded gun, you don't just trust that it's unloaded even if it's their job, but you check yourself there's no round in the chamber first before handling it.

Same with fighter jets, checks should be made by crew and pilot to ensure nothing escapes.

That is simply not true.

> I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

To be sure, military aviation doesn't give a flying fuck about virtue signaling. The name of the game is checklist and enumerated procedure compliance or GTFO the flightline/deck; it doesn't matter if you're a fighter pilot or maintenance ground crew.

I think it's unfair to blame a military pilot specifically, as they are part of a much larger machine, where the responsibility for that part of the team effort has been clearly delegated. F1 drivers aren't blamed for a loose wheel nut after a pit stop, Airline pilots aren't blamed for a gear failure etc.

The comparison to F1 drivers and airline pilots is a faulty analogy. F1 drivers can't be responsible for a loose wheel nut because there is literally nothing they could do to know about or fix the situation.

In this case, though, it is the pilot's responsibility to do a visual inspection before take off, which he clearly failed to do.

Of course they could be, they could hop out and check, but of course that task was intentionally and purposefully delegated away. You might be right about a visual inspection being the pilots responsibility, I am not privy to their actual checklist. But it isn't unthinkanle to have tasks delegated in high pressure high risk environments, and not all responsiblities fall onto the pilot.

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