Comment by nosianu
1 day ago
So? The comparison still makes no sense. Those switches cannot be accidentally flipped, and they are in a place where the pilots' hands have no action to take at all during that period. That is very different from mixing up two similar weapons in a similar location.
Location of the switches: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/c-gettyimag...
Here is a video of a takeoff and climb in a 787: https://youtu.be/TTZozTaWiRo
The pilots have no business with their hands in the area of those switches in that phase of the flight (9:30+ in the video). They don't even have to touch the throttle, and even if they did, that's a long way from where you touch the throttle down to the base where those switches are. Which you can't just flip either.
How is that even remotely similar to that cop's situation?
> Those switches cannot be accidentally flipped
Yes, unbelievable things can happen. There are crashes where the pilot got discombobulated and a crash resulted.
For another example, there are at least two crashes I recall (and I am sure there are many more) where the pilot pulled back to recover from a stall despite being trained endlessly to push forward to recover. (And they killed everyone on board.) Pilots get confused by what an alarm means, and do the wrong thing. Pilots assume the autopilot is on but they had accidentally turned it off. Sometimes people get crazy urges to do the wrong thing (there's a word for that: cacoethes).
These things are rare, but when there are millions of flights, rare things happen.
Interesting. "Cacoethes" means "malignant" in Greek. I didn't know the other meaning in English.
I cheated and looked up the word myself, and just had to use it!