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Comment by pie42000 | Hacker News Reader

pie42000

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.

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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.

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."

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

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