Boeing problems...

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Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
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However, if the person at the controls thinks they are doing the right thing there’s no amount of physical hazard controls that can prevent you from doing the wrong thing.
Watched Spaceballs a week ago where they gagged on stuff like this. How about a flashing red lighted display on/off/on/off/on/off "You are about to cut off fuel to both engines! WARNING !!!" Accompanied by siren like an ambulance careening through your neighborhood.Rinse/Repeat/Rinse/Repeat...

I mean you have to be catatonic to think that's anything but the wrong thing to do.

They were what? Maybe 20 seconds after lift off? Why would the pilots be doing anything with manual controls of that sort? I don't think there was confusion, it was pilot suicide. It's one of the risks you take when flying commercial aviation.
 
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yottabit

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2008
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Two actions to trigger - lift and move the switch and someone correct me but if it had only happened on a single engine they would have likely been ok so two failures (both switches thrown) before realization of the catastrophic hazard.

Doesn’t seem like a Boeing problem unless there was something in the circuitry that affected both switch positions at the same time.
The report states both switches were thrown 1 second apart, so it even all but rules out any kind of simultaneous failure. I really don’t want to speculate but unfortunately I feel like premeditated nefarious action is the most likely explanation.

I don’t know of any similar actions that would be performed to throwing those switches. But in any case, this is something you don’t mix up - it would be like switching off your car ignition right after you pull onto the highway.

I’m sure there were all kinds of alarms going off after the fuel was cutoff, which is what led to the other pilot asking why it was cut. Within 10 seconds of fuel cutoff they switched fuel back on and initiated the engine restart procedure but there just wasn’t enough time.
 
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pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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Watched Spaceballs a week ago where they gagged on stuff like this. How about a flashing red lighted display on/off/on/off/on/off "You are about to cut off fuel to both engines! WARNING !!!" Accompanied by siren like an ambulance careening through your neighborhood.Rinse/Repeat/Rinse/Repeat...

I mean you have to be catatonic to think that's anything but the wrong thing to do.

They were what? Maybe 20 seconds after lift off? Why would the pilots be doing anything with manual controls of that sort? I don't think there was confusion, it was pilot suicide. It's one of the risks you take when flying commercial aviation.


From my position of immense expertise (from watching lots of youtube videos about airplane disasters) I gather one issue with those audio alerts (the siren you mention) is that when you have multiple alerts going off simultaneously the plane is designed to suppress the 'less important' ones.

Anyway, so far it doesn't sound as if enough information has come out to fully explain anything. It's really distressing to think this might be one of those that remains forever a mystery.

Does the fact that the flight data says those cut-off switches were flipped absolutely definitely mean they were physically operated? Is there any way an electronic fault could register them as having flipped without the switches being physically moved? Or is the system largely mechanical, making that impossible?
 
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Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
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The report states both switches were thrown 1 second apart, so it even all but rules out any kind of simultaneous failure. I really don’t want to speculate but unfortunately I feel like premeditated nefarious action is the most likely explanation.

I don’t know of any similar actions that would be performed to throwing those switches. But in any case, this is something you don’t mix up - it would be like switching off your car ignition right after you pull onto the highway.

I’m sure there were all kinds of alarms going off after the fuel was cutoff, which is what led to the other pilot asking why it was cut. Within 10 seconds of fuel cutoff they switched fuel back on and initiated the engine restart procedure but there just wasn’t enough time.
Common cause failures do happen. Had a case where a critical triply redundant computer system kept crapping out.

Turns out its triply redundant power feeds all went through the same area. An area where an environmental system had been causing condensation driven corrosion unbeknownst to anyoneQ. The corrosion was causing dirty power across all three systems at basically the same time.
 

yottabit

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2008
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Common cause failures do happen. Had a case where a critical triply redundant computer system kept crapping out.

Turns out its triply redundant power feeds all went through the same area. An area where an environmental system had been causing condensation driven corrosion unbeknownst to anyoneQ. The corrosion was causing dirty power across all three systems at basically the same time.
Right but my point was the two cutoff switches were actuated one second apart (about how fast they could both be intentionally switched by one motivated pilot)

It’s this time gap of one second that IMO precludes a common cause failure. IMG_1400.jpeg

Other indicators this is probably due to human factors are the lack of the grounding of any other 787 by Boeing or regulators, and Air India reportedly taking actions around their pilot training program shortly after the incident
 
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K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
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It is not impossible one of the pilots entirely by mistake flipped the cut offs. Intentional action is also right there as a well but it could have happened.

I've seen people do stuff absentmindedly then deny they did it entirely believing they are telling the truth. Brains sometimes fuck up.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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I've seen people do stuff absentmindedly then deny they did it entirely believing they are telling the truth.

Yup...I've seen this in software, machine tools, driving, etc. Brain goes on auto-pilot mode!
 

yottabit

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2008
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It is not impossible one of the pilots entirely by mistake flipped the cut offs. Intentional action is also right there as a well but it could have happened.

I've seen people do stuff absentmindedly then deny they did it entirely believing they are telling the truth. Brains sometimes fuck up.
Yes, I think there’s pretty strong evidence someone flipped both switches with intention but we can’t necessarily conclude they knew exactly what they were doing in that moment, or even who flipped the switches.

Sleep deprivation, under the effects of a drug, some undiagnosed medical issue like a brain tumor could explain some erratic behavior.

The most similar example that comes to mind is this one https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/23/us-pilot-magic-mushrooms-plane-engines

That being said, even the less experienced pilot had over 1,000 hours in that type of aircraft and had flown it within the past week so I just don’t buy the absentminded accident without either some complicating mental factor or nefarious intent.

If someone did have nefarious intent, they would know that immediately after takeoff is the only window of time where this sort of action would be totally unrecoverable. The fact they deny doing it in the recording doesn’t rule this out, they could have been trying to mislead the other to delay engine restart attempt.

So I don’t think there’s enough evidence to conclude anything but if you asked me for a hunch it would be that.
 
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Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
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Right but my point was the two cutoff switches were actuated one second apart (about how fast they could both be intentionally switched by one motivated pilot)

It’s this time gap of one second that IMO precludes a common cause failure. View attachment 127043

Other indicators this is probably due to human factors are the lack of the grounding of any other 787 by Boeing or regulators, and Air India reportedly taking actions around their pilot training program shortly after the incident
I generally agree this going to come down to pilot error. But when investigating a failure you build a fault tree and common cause electrical or mechanical failure is a possibility along with operator error.

What if there was FOD in the housing and as they pulled back on the throttles it contacted one fuel cutoff line and then the other causing a false signal on both. Not likely but not impossible either (until you investigate).
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
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We basically have a reason why the plane crashed and that is it so far. Fuel was cutoff to both engines and appears to be tied to the fuel cutoff switches being activated. Now the hard part is figuring out how/why that happened. That is what will take months.
 
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hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
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We basically have a reason why the plane crashed and that is it so far. Fuel was cutoff to both engines and appears to be tied to the fuel cutoff switches being activated. Now the hard part is figuring out how/why that happened. That is what will take months.
Systems I have worked on have plastic guards on switches that could cause problems with operations. There are other types that required extra effort like pulling on them to be able to get them to actuate. This is what the 787 uses. They can't be flipped accidentally. Don't know if there is software detecting them or that they are a direct connection.

 
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pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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Scary. Not the first time a commercial airliner was crashed due to pilot suicide. No way both of these switches were moved by accident. One of those two pilots answered in a way to cover himself. Likely the one who said it wasn’t me. He knows the CVR will pick up the conversation.

Though they might have been saying something they genuinely believed - i.e. for whatever reason, they didn't register/remember/realise that they'd moved the switches.
Unless there are some very dramatic revelations about the pilots' background/state-of-mind/medical condition, it's looking distressingly as if we might not ever know for certain what happened.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,866
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Systems I have worked on have plastic guards on switches that could cause problems with operations. There are other types that required extra effort like pulling on them to be able to get them to actuate. This is what the 787 uses. They can't be flipped accidentally. Don't know if there is software detecting them or that they are a direct connection.

Thinking about all this I have to wonder why they don't implement AI to determine if actually cutting off the fuel to the engines at this particular moment isn't inevitably catastrophic. If it is, have AI do a no-no: "Sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
 

Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
17,633
15,820
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Thinking about all this I have to wonder why they don't implement AI to determine if actually cutting off the fuel to the engines at this particular moment isn't inevitably catastrophic. If it is, have AI do a no-no: "Sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
As a safety engineer let me just say

1752514661960.gif

Do you want software crashing planes? Because that’s how you get software crashing planes.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,866
10,221
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As a safety engineer let me just say

View attachment 127140

Do you want software crashing planes? Because that’s how you get software crashing planes.
I thought of that. Well, the system is only as good as its design and implementation, however that plane crash resulted in the death of some ~280 people. Clearly the system in place failed to prevent that.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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From my position of immense expertise (from watching lots of youtube videos about airplane disasters) I gather one issue with those audio alerts (the siren you mention) is that when you have multiple alerts going off simultaneously the plane is designed to suppress the 'less important' ones.

Anyway, so far it doesn't sound as if enough information has come out to fully explain anything. It's really distressing to think this might be one of those that remains forever a mystery.

Does the fact that the flight data says those cut-off switches were flipped absolutely definitely mean they were physically operated? Is there any way an electronic fault could register them as having flipped without the switches being physically moved? Or is the system largely mechanical, making that impossible?
Use a stimulus otherwise unutilized. Have the switch give you a nice 20w buzz when you yank on it, the hand equivalent of sticking your tongue on a 9v. Not enough to force you to let go when you don't wanna, but enough to wake you up to 'that's a different thing'.
 
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Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
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As a safety engineer let me just say

View attachment 127140

Do you want software crashing planes? Because that’s how you get software crashing planes.
So, it's better to have unhinged pilots crashing planes than software that's designed and tested to be fail safe, but could conceivably fail?

I personally wrote a lot of code for a mission critical application for the company of my employ over 2+ years. I alone wrote the code changes, surveyed and tested each release and there were many. IIRC, I never had an embarrassing or serious failure that I couldn't remedy easily and quickly. In fact, I don't remember failures at all. You don't release code that can fail, was my mantra. You test it to your satisfaction. When hundreds of lives and many millions of dollars and a major corporation's reputation are at stake, you are that much more careful and testing methodologies take center stage.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
51,462
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So, it's better to have unhinged pilots crashing planes than software that's designed and tested to be fail safe, but could conceivably fail?

FWIW, modern airplane Autopilot is actually pretty good! Garmin Emergency Autoland can do a touchdown & even communicate with the ATC:


 
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Jul 27, 2020
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When hundreds of lives and many millions of dollars and a major corporation's reputation are at stake, you are that much more careful and testing methodologies take center stage.
Unfortunately, large corporations don't work that way. First, the people involved would inflate the workload on purpose to justify pretty hefty payouts. Then they would assign it to a huge team, all with various responsibilities and very poor communication between them. The higher the count of the people involved in the effort, the slower things go and they end up writing extremely pathetic code that is wayyyyy too long than it should be. You had success mainly because the whole codebase was in your head and you knew exactly which function was being performed by which code block. When a larger team is involved, everyone is focused on their own code blocks or functions and the interactions between different code blocks can be very hard to debug, with a lot of finger pointing involved. My company's mobile app effort has been going on for 2+ years because there are two different teams involved and both have trouble understanding the other's API requirements, leading to each of them coding things that the other's system doesn't handle properly and then they blame each other. Utter lack of co-ordination.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Everyone needs to watch the twitter video of the fuel control switches embedded in this article. No way these switches could've been used to inadvertently cut off the fuel. It was deliberate action. The senior pilot's brain simply must have cracked or something, causing him to possibly absent-mindedly flip those switches.

This aviation expert is saying the same thing with evidence of pilot induced crashes in aviation history: https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/ind...lot-deliberately-crash-flight-171-1.500195974


I suppose the next step would be to identify finger prints on these fuel switches?

Also, sigh: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/03/air-india-behaviour-bereaved-families-aviation-lawyer

Air India Flight AI171, Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, 12 June 2025
QUESTIONNAIRE
The following information will facilitate Air India Limited in processing the advance payments and
determination of the final compensation arising out of the death of a passenger in Flight No. AI171
on 12th June 2025. This form, duly filled in along with the necessary supporting documentation,
may be submitted to Air India via email to compensation.ai171@airindia.com. Kindly note that
an advance compensation of Rs. 25 lacs** will be paid at this stage which shall be adjusted against
the final compensation payable.
I. Personal information about the passenger
1. First name, family name: ___________________________________________________
2. Date of birth: ____________________________________________________________
3. Place of birth: ___________________________________________________________
4. Sex: male  female  other  (please mark with a cross)
5. Marital status: ___________________________________________________________
6. Nationality: _____________________________________________________________
7. Residential Address:______________________________________________________
8. Please enclose a copy of the birth certificate of the passenger, or any other alternate
proof of age (such as passport, Aadhar Card, etc.)
II. Information about the family members who were related to the passenger
Please kindly provide us with details concerning the family members of the passenger [e.g.:
wife or husband, parent, step-parent, grand parent, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister,
child, step-child, grand-child.]
Please also provide us with copies of legal documents confirming relationship (e.g.: birth
certificates, marriage certificate, passport, etc) in respect of the below mentioned persons.
1. First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
_______________________________________________________________________
Email Address: ______________
Financially Dependent on passenger - Yes/ No

p. 2

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2. First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
________________________________________________
Email Address: ______________
Financially Dependent on passenger - Yes/ No
3. First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
________________________________________________
Email Address: ______________
Financially Dependent on passenger - Yes/ No
4. First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger
________________________________________________
Email Address: ______________
Financially Dependent on passenger - Yes/ No
5. First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
________________________________________________

p. 3

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3
Email Address: ______________
Financially Dependent on passenger - Yes/ No
Please indicate further members of the family and their details on the reverse side of this
page or on a separate page.
III. Additional information, if available, on the occupation and the income of the passenger
1. Was the passenger employed? yes  no  (please mark with a cross)
If yes, please indicate occupation:
_______________________________________________________________________
If yes, please indicate the name, address and telephone of the employer:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
2. Was the passenger self-employed? yes  no  (please mark with a cross)
3. Any further information you wish to state in respect of the passenger’s employment?
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Please note that appropriate documents or further information may be called for at a later
date.
V. Information about the person filling out this questionnaire
Please kindly indicate the following:
First name, family name:
_______________________________________________________________________
Date of birth:
_______________________________________________________________________
Address, telephone and email:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
_______________________________________________________________________

p. 4

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VI. Name of the member of the family authorized to receive the interim compensation on
behalf of all members of the family*:
First name, family name:___________________________________________________
Date of birth: ___________________________________________________________
Address/Telephone:
_______________________________________________________________________
Relationship to the passenger:
_______________________________________________________________________
Bank Account Details:
Account Name:
Account Number:
Type of Account:
Bank:
Branch:
IFSC Code:
Any other relevant details of the bank account:
Please provide self-attested copies of the following documents of the member of the family
authorized to receive the interim compensation:
(a) PAN Card
(b) Aadhar Card
(c) Passport
(d) Bank account statement / passbook evidencing the bank account details
__________________________________________________________________________
Place and date: Name and Signature:
Mobile No.:
*Interim compensation will be paid against a receipt and indemnity (the form of which will be
provided after scrutiny of this form) being executed by the member of the family authorized to
receive interim compensation. Air India’s representatives will contact you for any additional
information or clarifications it may need after receipt of the form.
**Kindly note that the interim compensation does not include the ex-gratia payment of Rs. 1 crore, which
was announced by the Tata group. The ex-gratia payment will be a voluntary payment and is not
intended to constitute recognition of any liability. The details in this form will also be used for the
purposes of the ex-gratia payment, and the families will be contacted by the Tata group soon after we
have received the details in the form.

But Neenan said: “The repeated story that we have heard from our clients is that families have been told by Air India that they have to complete a questionnaire to get the advance payment, forcing them to fill out this questionnaire in appalling conditions: small, crowded rooms, in intense heat with no guidance on the terms and questions within the questionnaire.

“Our clients have shown us the questionnaire. It demands legally significant information using terms which have a legal definition which is not being told to families.

“The forms say that Air India will use the information given to calculate compensation. They ask for apparently straightforward information but using terms that are actually very legally charged and contain a lot of nuance that you need legal training before being able to understand.

“There is no question that the information being asked for could be used against families by Air India in the future,” he said. “There are two scenarios that will come out of families filling out these forms: either families get lawyers like me involved afterwards, and then we have to argue in court that the relative filled out the form without understanding the terms, and hope the judge agrees with us.

“Or, which is even worse, the airline calculates compensation using information on the form, the family don’t get legal representation, and accept what I guarantee will be a significantly lower level of compensation – and that could be millions of pounds less than they are entitled to.”

“We are advising our clients not to complete this form and to seek specialist legal advice,” he added. “We are shocked and appalled that Air India is seeking this information from families when they are at their most vulnerable. They should feel ashamed.”

Pilot groups rejecting human error and pointing to possible conspiracy plot to lay the blame on the pilots: https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-basis-pilot-groups-reject-121503653.html
 
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NWRMidnight

Diamond Member
Jun 18, 2001
3,565
3,081
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I thought of that. Well, the system is only as good as its design and implementation, however that plane crash resulted in the death of some ~280 people. Clearly the system in place failed to prevent that.
Safety starts and ends with us humans. There is no system, or safety mitigation that can be developed that won't fail, at some point, or can't be manipulated. All safety measures and protocals are only secondary procations to aid us humans in staying safe. The problem is, we humans tend to start relying on such safety mitigations and become complacent relying on sensors, safety procations, etc, which in itself is dangerous, because that shit fails all the time. Yet, people believe that the safety measures will prevent them from doing something stupid, so they just blindly act because they have put all their faith in mechanical/electronic/software that they believe will prevent them from being stupid. A simple example is cars now days, that tell you that someone is in the other lane (some won't even allow you to manuever to the next lane), to the point that drivers don't even check their mirrors and/or look over their shoulder before changing lanes.. resulting in accidents because they have become reliant on the built in safety protocals and become lazy and complacent. Hell, every person on this board should know that software, electronics, etc fuck up and fail all the time. Yet your solution is to have AI, which is nothing more than software and electronis, to "protect" us from people's own stupiditly, and/or mental instabilities. No matter how much we try, we will never be able to remove the human factor, AI is just an extention of that, just in a different form.
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
29,854
30,631
136
So, it's better to have unhinged pilots crashing planes than software that's designed and tested to be fail safe, but could conceivably fail?

I personally wrote a lot of code for a mission critical application for the company of my employ over 2+ years. I alone wrote the code changes, surveyed and tested each release and there were many. IIRC, I never had an embarrassing or serious failure that I couldn't remedy easily and quickly. In fact, I don't remember failures at all. You don't release code that can fail, was my mantra. You test it to your satisfaction. When hundreds of lives and many millions of dollars and a major corporation's reputation are at stake, you are that much more careful and testing methodologies take center stage.
No software of any complexity is “failsafe”.
 

yottabit

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2008
1,671
874
146
It’s kind of silly to suggest software level safeguards for this. The fundamental question is “do we want pilots to be able to fly the plane?” and if the answer is yes, which it is today, they’ll always have the capacity to crash it. Almost every system on a plane has some manual override or backup.

But the human factors side is mostly solveable. If it was due to fatigue then well that’s corporate greed stretching the scheduling and staffing requirements too thin.

And if it was due to mental health issues then they need to figure out some way to change the stigma around that for pilots. Like maybe promise employer sponsored paid leave until they can be cleared for duty again.

Currently pilots are highly disincentivized from sharing their mental health status and there’s been fatal crashes because of it


Neither of these things are likely to change without government intervention and forced regulations