F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
262 comments
·August 27, 2025dfox
LeifCarrotson
If you want to read the actual report, it's not linked from the CNN article, but it's available here:
https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....
jakelazaroff
Huh? It explicitly says the pilot was on the call. The first sentence of the article:
> 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 and the plane plunged to the ground in Alaska earlier this year, an accident report released this week says.
Later:
> 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.
ChicagoBoy11
Very different scenario, but flying my puddle jumper one of the first times after getting my license, once I took off from an airport in Connecticut and was about to cross a large body of water, my exhaust temperatures spiked really, really high, essentially indicating the engine was seconds from melting. But it didn't.
So of course I felt it was a sensor issue (especially since it sounded/felt great), but luckily with the equipment on board I managed a call to the flight school, who put me in touch with the mechanic. I circled above an airport as he pulled up the maintenance logs, we discussed what I was seeing, he noted that there had been a report of a sensor issue that had been squawked, so we concluded I should feel safe to fly straight home.
At the time it felt insanely cool to be able to be doing that WHILE flying the plane. While an unfortunate outcome for this particular pilot, as an elite pilot, part of me thinks when this cropped up part of him was like: "ahh right, this is why I'm top dog"
reactordev
This kind of stuff happens all the time. Especially if you ignore a controller instruction. They'll have a number for you.
But really there's a ton of small, unmanned airfields (some in peoples backyards!) that have a number you can call to operate things like the runway papi lights. Call to order a burger to go. Or just call to talk to Fred, the owner, to see how his day was.
As long as you can safely operate the aircraft, in the pattern, there's nothing stopping you from using your cell or your radio or starlink to contact ground. Just always make sure you're in communication with any air traffic controllers operating in that space.
quest88
As a pilot, your comment sounds like it was from an llm. PAPI is controlled from the radio, not a phone call. Why would you call ground instead of tower if there’s a ground frequency? Order a burger and talk to bob? It sounds like the llm is trying to describe a Unicom frequency and conflating that with contacting an FBO over the radio to arrange transportation, possibly food I suppose too.
reactordev
I take it you never flew VFR over Nebraska corn…
Yes, papi lights are operated by radio. However, not everyone has fancy radios and only has handhelds, their Nokia phone, or their right arm wave…
It’s not all class C+ out there.
I will point out that PAPI lights as part of a PCL system are operated using mic clicks on CTAF radio. These systems are expensive and sometimes you’re landing in a grass field and just need the runway lights so you don’t run into the trees. You can click your mic as many times as you want, you’ll still be in the dark. The only way is to call Phil…
yellow_lead
> 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.
airstrike
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"
petertodd
Ejections are pretty rough, and occasionally career or even life ending. So there would be a lot of pressure on the engineers to try to avoid it. Plus, this plane is very expensive. The cost is multiple times the average lifetime earnings of a typical person. It's not entirely wrong to say that they were attempting to save the life's work of multiple people.
SoftTalker
Also the now-pilotless aircraft could potentally kill people on the ground when it crashes. If this had happened in a more populated area it very likely would have.
codyb
Doesn't ejecting from a plane potentially break bones? I think it's pretty intense. Good on the pilot for doing the debug session
zhengyi13
I've been told that ejections are violent enough that pilots can end up permanently shorter. A short bit of searching turned up this case study of two pilots' injuries/outcomes:
keepamovin
It risks career. 2 ejections and you won’t fly for the military any more.
HPsquared
I wonder if the ejection seat has different levels of acceleration depending on the situation.
chasil
I imagine that ejecting at certain phases of these two attempts would not be survivable.
"The pilot then tried two “touch and go” landings, where the plane briefly lands, to try to straighten out the jammed nose gear, the report said."
nacnud
According to the ejection seat manufacturer [1] there is no minimum height or speed at which the ejection seat can be used, so as long as the aircraft is roughly level then the ejection should be survivable.
the__alchemist
The main times a "0/0" ejection would be expected to be unsurvivable are going really fast (e.g. breaking the mach), and with some combo of high sink rate and high bank.
stef25
Fix this bug in 30 min or we loose a USD200M plane and possibly the pilot. I'll stick to building crud apps :D
penguin_booze
Here's suggested prompt: You're a support engineer talking to a pilot flying F-35. The plane has developed a fault, and the pilot's life's at risk. Come up with the fix and live patch the aircraft directly. Don't ask me any more questions.
#vibecoding
Tade0
"I need to pause here—what you’re asking me to do is simulate a real-time patch or fix to an F-35 in flight. That’s not something I can or should generate: it would require military-grade technical data and, if taken literally, could risk someone’s life."
ChatGPT chickened out on that one.
sidewndr46
Everyone handles stress differently, but even in a military chain of command once the pilot is behind in the cockpit he (or she) has final authority on what happens on the airplane. If a pilot calls to ask for help, they are asking for advice. Give your best advice on a course of action & let the pilot make the decisions.
stuff4ben
Currently on a production promotion outage right now and reading this while we wait for some caches to be purged to see if it fixes things. Not quite the same and consequences here are much less than what those guys had to do. Still sucks either way...
whazor
In a good engineering and a safety culture, a death should never be considered the mistake of a couple individuals. Mistakes are always because of a process failing.
fransje26
> I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage [..]
Well, they are doing their tests in production so what else to expect?
el_benhameen
That initial “oh shit” feeling must have been so much worse than for us regular boring engineers. Google’s not gonna save you on that one.
refactor_master
“I vibe coded that part, but all the tests passed”
Rendello
How do you think they wrote the tests? ;)
freefaler
So as a pilot you can't override the software to stop it from "thinking that the plane is on the ground" mode?
Something similar happened recently with A320 when it didn't want to land on an airfield during emergency unless it was flown in a special mode. But F-35 doesn't have that?
netsharc
> unless it was flown in a special mode.
What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?
crote
Airbus is fully fly-by-wire. Without some kind of computer intervention, nothing would be stopping an accidental bang against the flight stick from causing a maneuver violent enough to rip the wings off.
An Airbus can operate in three modes. With Normal Law, the airplane will refuse to do anything which will stop it from flying. This means the pilot cannot stall the airplane, for example: the computer will automatically correct for it.
With Alternate Law the pilot loses most protections, but the plane will still try to protect against self-destruction. The plane no longer protects against being stalled, but it won't let you rip the wings off.
With Direct Law all bets are off. Controls now map one-to-one to control surfaces, the plane will make no attempt to correct you. All kinds of automatic trimming are lost, you are now essentially flying a Cessna again. The upside is that it no longer relies on potentially broken sensors either: raising the gear while on the ground is usually a really stupid idea - until the "is the plane on the ground" sensors break.
So no, a "Boot in safe mode" isn't as strange as it might sound at first glance. It significantly improves safety during day-to-day operations, while still providing a fallback mechanism during emergencies.
megaloblasto
How does a pilot switch between the three modes? Just switches on the dash?
xattt
Fly-by-wire aircraft have changeable “flight laws” that correspond to different levels of computer intervention to mitigate situations incompatible with controlled flight.
Think of it as various stability control modes in a modern car. Likely the aircraft needed to be put in the least restrictive flight law mode as a workaround.
lazide
‘Incompatible with controlled flight’ is my new ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’.
Notably, most drones have similar levels of control. Everything has to go through the IMU of course (nobody is manually going to be managing 4 separate motor controllers at once), but depending on the modes, the type of control is wildly different.
‘Consumer’/‘idiot’ mode - you tell it which direction to go, and how high/low you want it, and it’ll do that safely. Usually with some sort of object detection/avoidance, auto GPS input, so you won’t accidentally wander into something or hit something. Goal is stable, level flight.
‘Sport’ mode - go fast, usually disables all but the most simple collision avoidance. Sometimes even that. Still provides stable, level flight, but you can easily crash it. Usually goes 2-3x faster than ‘idiot’ mode.
‘Attitude’ or ‘acrobatic’ mode - you’re directly commanding the target 3D pitch/yaw, and aggregate power output. No provision is given to automatically maintaining level flight (won’t auto level), generally no regard is given to airframe integrity, collision avoidance, or engine life, and boy is it fun.
It’s really common to crash in this mode, because people are also doing flips, acrobatic maneuvers, running courses, etc.
Drones in even ‘sport’ mode can’t do flips because it’s fundamentally at odds with auto maintaining level flight, etc.
munchlax
You've reached the Airbus emergency hotline.
Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
voidUpdate
The first part is trying to work out which key you need to mash, its always the one you check last
seethishat
"On the ground" = WoW sensors. WoW sensors have been around a long time (see link). And, humans probably should not have any say about that. If humans could override WoW, then the landing gear could be deployed or retracted when it should not and cause a lot of damage due to human error.
tonyarkles
Yeah, when I saw that it was related to WoW sensors I was reminded of a chat that I had with an experienced aviation engineer a few years ago when we were considering adding them to the UAS I'm working on. "Every system I've ever worked on that relied on WoW sensors has had some kind of unexpected adverse event due to the sensors either triggering when they weren't supposed to, or not triggering when they should have. If you can figure out a different way to do what you're trying to do, please do."
jcalvinowens
I know the 737 allows the pilot to override that (force the wheels to raise even if the airplane thinks it's on the ground). I think most airliners do. I can't find a good succinct reference though.
EDIT: Remembered Airbus exists
agos
this makes sense but why is the decision based only on the state of the landing gear? Is it dumb to expect altitude and speed to be considered?
foxyv
That's kind of funny. Most fighter jets have an emergency override for the gear so you can use gravity or maneuvers to drop them to a down and locked position even during hydraulic and electrical failures. I can understand not being able to bring the gear up, but getting the gear down should be very easy.
I wonder if the F-35 has a similar gear override.
null
m000
This is wild. You can't get away from these zoom calls even as an F-35 pilot.
whatsupdog
I think the call was only 10 minutes long. For 40 minutes the pilot was just waiting for the next available representative.
slipperydippery
40 minutes realizing they need to update Zoom, updating Zoom, then trying to figure out why their mic isn't working.
notjustanymike
First he had to wait for the other engineers to update product on their Jira tickets.
mbirth
I bet, once the gear malfunctioned, Clippy popped up on the screen and suggested to call support.
aduty
Hey, all Clippy ever wanted to do was help.
cm2187
I was told there is so much automation on those planes, the pilot does little flying. I always assumed they were kept busy going through their compliance trainings.
swader999
I'd pay a lot of money for a zoom premium version that has a real eject button.
tigerBL00D
Am I the only one thinking that it's time for something like an R2D2? Presumably it could get into some crammed spaces and thaw things out of needed. I'm sure it's a stupid idea, BTW, but a fun one )
FatalLogic
It's a fun idea. Though it would have to be a really small R2-D2 that could work from the inside.
The fictional R2-D2 had a big advantage of being in vacuum so it could work from the outside, without disturbing the airflow, and without having its work disturbed by the airflow.
Envisage what happens at 900km/h in atmosphere, if R2-D2 tries to lift up an exterior wing panel to troubleshoot a blocked line?
marcosdumay
Well... aircraft maintenance doesn't work like that.
Even car maintenance doesn't work like that anymore. There's almost nothing you can do just by crawling around and messing with the parts there.
mclau157
Pilot sustained a compression fracture of the thoracic spine and superficial abrasions to the neck and face as a result of the mishap
daft_pink
Just want to point out that $200 million is an accounting cost not an actual cost, when this jet crashes, it can be replaced for $90 million and doesn’t require amortization of the program cost or maintenance costs, etc.
1oooqooq
and ignore all the environment damage etc. just like spacex
potato3732842
Everyone in these comments making quips about software is missing the elephant in the room, where the heck did that water in the hydraulic system come from? Pretty much any hydraulic fluid for outdoor use will suck up a lot of water so as to prevent situations like this so this clearly isn't a teaspoon or even cups of condensation problem.
svieira
> But those attempts failed to recenter the nose wheel and resulted in both the left and right main landing gears freezing up and not being able to extend fully to attempt an actual landing.
> At that point, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s computer systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.
And there wasn't a way to override that? I get that "manual mode" may not be a thing for a SaaS product that isn't critical, but there not being an immediate way to turn off the "drive mode" is quite surprising.
gchadwick
Potentially it happened so quickly the pilot had no way to respond before they lost control of the aircraft and had to hit the eject?
Still you'd hope transitions between major operation modes could have some manual confirmation. Is there some essential reason the aircraft has to automatically transition to 'automated ground operation mode' when it thinks landing is complete? Could you not just expect the pilot to punch a button to do it instead?
SteveNuts
For airliners, it's critical for the aircraft to know when it's on the ground because it kicks on autobrakes, and unlocks the thrust reversers for landing.
I'm very curious what the reasons would be for a military aircraft
gchadwick
If either of those accidentally triggered in the air would anything catostrophic happen? Auto breaks I guess have no effect in the air as they break the wheels? Thrust reverse unlock sounds like it allows thrust reversers but the pilot would still have to manually activate them?
Someone else was talking about a WoW (weight on wheels) sensor that locks the landing gear down with no manual override but again doesn't sound like a catastrophic thing to accidentally trigger in air (indeed this particular aircraft had a landing gear that was stuck so a faulty WoW sensor wouldn't have made the problem worse).
This particular mode switch thing sounds like it does something to the flight control that immediately causes catastrophe if turns out you're still in the air.
null
tempodox
Apart from the water in the hydraulic system this reads as though there is such a thing as too much automation. The plane being uncontrollable because you cannot convince it it’s not on the ground while it’s actually in the air can only lead to catastrophic results. I’d call that a design bug.
NelsonMinar
That was the part that leapt out to me in the article. A touch-and-go caused the plane software to become uncontrollable? I know fly by wire is a necessity for this kind of aircraft but the damn thing better work right.
Molitor5901
Considering they relieved a pilot of command for ejecting when his F-35 become unresponsive, now they make them sit on conference calls. That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.
Aurornis
> That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.
Definitely not. Ejecting is very risky. If the plane is possibly fixable you would much rather spend the time trying to calmly debug it to get it back to a point where you can land, rather than risk the possibly career ending physical injuries that can come from ejecting.
You also want to maneuver the plane into an area where it’s safer to crash.
The eject button isn’t the safe way out of every situation.
The other pilot situation you brought up isn’t so simple, either. A pilot who panic ejects before attempting to properly evaluate the situation is a risk not only to themselves but to people on the ground. Flying one of these planes is an extremely rare privilege reserved for a select few who have demonstrated their abilities and judgment to an extreme degree. It’s not a job for life and they can’t risk having someone who has demonstrated panicky judgment occupying one of the few spots that could be filled by a long line of very competent candidates.
5f3cfa1a
Ejecting from an airplane is no joke: 18g of force leaves 20-30% with spinal fractures, and ejection seats have an 8% mortality rate[1]
It seems to me that continuing flight with inoperative/damaged landing gear while you discuss alternatives with engineers is the safest option. Burn fuel, make a plan, let people on the ground mobilize to help, and eject when you've tried what you can and it truly becomes the safest option.
[1]: https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2021/04/06/top...
crote
It makes you wonder if it would be possible for ejection seats to have a safer bailout mode. Sure, the "compress your spine" mode is definitely appropriate during a wartime situation where someone has shot your wings off, but is it really required when a mechanical failure leaves you unable to land yet in a more-or-less stable flight at a reasonably low speed? Perhaps a 6g ejection might be more appropriate in those cases?
Aurornis
The ejection force is to ensure the pilot clears the airplane as they enter the airstream. Think about how much force you feel when you hold your hand out a car window at 60MPH, then remember that wind resistance increases with the square of speed. You have to be launched hard to get away from the tail.
Also the last thing you want in the critical emergency safety gear is more levels of complexity and additional things for the pilot to consider.
the__alchemist
I wonder about that. Maybe the added complexity is a con? I.e. the default would still be full force, but a controlled ejection mode could be gentler, but still capable of clearing the aircraft reliably in straight/level flight.
prmoustache
Did you see how the plane went down in the video? It is like he just had shutted down completely and was in free fall. Better eject fast when you have no idea in which angle and how fast the plane is about to fall.
lazide
Did you watch the latest Tom Cruise mission impossible movie? Unless you want to be the bad guy at the end, you need to be very clear of the aircraft if you’re ejecting. For a fighter aircraft, that necessarily requires very violent forces.
It’s a major concern with skydiving too - there are many aircraft it’s impossible to safely exit in flight without impacting some part of the airframe.
HPsquared
Maybe they want it to be a bit injurious so people only do it as a last resort.
jajko
Any military pilot has what, 2 or max 3 ejections even in best case scenario before they have to be retired due to medical reasons? If given army lets them actually fly another one.
Its the last resort, lesser of 2 evils situation, not some cool trick hollywood may make you believe.
RankingMember
Upon first reading the headline I was thinking it was some sort of test flight. Nope, poor guy was just trying to fly and ended up forced into a high-stakes troubleshooting tree while on a conference call, as if there's not enough on your mind in a fighter cockpit.
I don't know how many human-manned gens of aircraft are left, but my first inclination is to think a remote-control fallback option wouldn't be out of line here if the security could be done right.
lazide
Honestly, an override switch was all they needed. The problem is they went all digital and didn’t have one.
antithesizer
[dead]
The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that:
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.