Some loose thoughts:<p>Military aircraft cockpits sometimes don't have a great concept of "inside" and "outside", the way a cell, waterproof device, the aircraft's pressure seal etc do. If you drop something (FOD), there may not be a clearly defined boundary to where it can end up, or it may not be possible to see or get to it while strapped in etc. Rudder pedals, or the various mechanical and electrical connections around them, as indicated in the article, are a great example of this. If you can't find it, the AC may have to be grounded and thoroughly searched/panels removed etc.<p>Military avionics may be missing basic things that an EFB can help with, including maps, nav point and airport databases, weather info, ADSB info etc. EFBs are (IMO) a poor substitute due to the FOD concern here, the clunky touch screen interface (which you probably have to take gloves off for), the risk of getting locked out of important things like checklist and plates by BlackBerry, Foreflight licenses, passcode timers or other security layer etc.<p>You might have a jet that's 30 years old, just got retrofitted with a really nice radar etc, but the funding didn't make it through for a database, better displays/UI etc that would be better integrated with a jet, so you lean on the EFBs.<p>There are sometimes EFB mounts that can attach to a canopy via suction cup, clip onto various surfaces etc.
EFB (Electronic Flight Bags) have introduced all kinds of usability issues with aircraft that pilots must account for, and not just for mechanical reasons. Objects getting jammed into flight controls isn't an ipad phenomenon - clipboards, water bottles, etc all have contributed to mishaps.<p>One major issue with EFBs is many pilots extensive reliance on them for navigation and traffic avoidance, and their failure in flight since they are commercial off the shelf products. A very common issue during the summer months is for an iPad to very easily overheat and just shut down. Another is battery life. iPads are consumer electronic devices and aren't held to even a semblance of tolerances that aircraft avionics are held to, but they are relied upon as critial tools in flight now.<p>I've directly seen instances of aircraft that have violated airspace, gotten lost, and other issues that contribute just one more hole to the "swiss cheese" model of a catastrophic loss.
For anybody that liked the style of this sort of analysis, let me strongly recommend Dekker's "Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'": <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/dp/1472439058" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error...</a><p>It focuses on air crash investigations. But it's very useful to tech people in understanding the right way to approach incident investigations. It can be very easy to blame individuals ("stupid pilot shouldn't have dropped his iPad", etc), but that focus prevents improving safety over the long term. Dekker's book is a great argument for, as here, thinking about what actually happened and why as a systemic thing. Which provides much more fertile ground for making sure it doesn't happen again.
That’s sad. I can only imagine the amount of panic they must have went through.<p>I wonder what other fatal accidents have been caused by dropped electronics such as iPads and iPhones getting stuck under accelerators and brake pedals in cars and long haul trucks as an example.<p>There’s obviously distracted driving as well which is a major problem.
Somewhat related: An Icon A5 amphibious airplane [1] came down [2] because the occupants left a bluetooth speaker on top which hit the propeller upon take-off... You have to treat aircraft a bit more carefully than cars. (No fatalities, fortunately.)<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_A5" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_A5</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.aviation-safety.net/wikibase/236728" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.aviation-safety.net/wikibase/236728</a>
Both sets of pedals are of course linked so that the second pilot could never have brought the helicopter out of this predicament. Would an input monitoring and control system like on large airplanes have avoided the crash?<p>There’s an answer [0] on Quora that describes helicopter instructors having to deal with students frozen out of fear and wrestling for control of the inputs. Nightmare.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-the-pilot-and-copilot-push-the-stick-or-pedals-in-opposite-directions-on-a-Blackhawk-helicopter" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-the-pilot-and-copilot-...</a>
Memorys. My sister once left a candle in the car. When i was driving down from a mountain (Oberalppass, Switzerland), the candle rolled under the break peddal just before a hard u-turn. Super scary feeling when you hit the break and nothing does happen. I hit the break a second time with full force, the candle got pushed away and the ABS safed me.
It could have been a book, an ipad, a phone, camera, anything really... I wonder if the general design could be changed to help prevent anything from falling between the pedal and the wall...
I know nothing about helicopters, but just from driving a car I'd imagine there are a variety of ways the pedal can jam even without something falling in that space. Does a helicopter have an equivalent of shifting your car into neutral? (Which, given you're in the air, might not be a good idea ha. But hopefully you get my gist.)
Reminds me of the time I helped fish a mechanical pencil out of grand piano. It was dropped in _just_ the right spot that it jammed the sustain pedal open, but was completely unreachable, and the pianists sort of made the problem worse. Ended up using some mountain bike tools to get it out ironically (Park Tool IR-1.2).<p>It's very sad to see a tragedy like this caused by something so simple :(
A former coworker had a bad car crash after his <i>cat</i> jumped down between his feet!<p>When I took driving lesson, my instructor painted a vivid picture of the consequence of a crash while transporting heavy unsecured objects behind me - that lesson has stayed with me for over 30 years.
I've only flown RC helis, more like, attempted to fly them before inevitably always crashing. At least whenever it was a full-blown "collective pitch" model.<p>Can't imagine how mortifying it must have been to have any of the controls jammed up like that. These things require constant corrective inputs to remain airborne in anything resembling stable flight. And close to the ground loading water from a stream, with all that turbulence? Nightmare fuel.
The Navpad is a simple device that secures gadgets to your thigh.<p><a href="https://www.diblasi.com/aviation.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.diblasi.com/aviation.htm</a><p>Stuff gets dropped. Suction cup mounts have the habit of coming loose at inopportune times.
Didn’t this happen on an Airbus at least once? I seem to remember hearing that pilot’s iPhone got wedged behind the joystick and pushed the nose down until he could knock it loose.