Because there's no difference in actions needed to do so. A similar mistake is throwing away a useful item while holding onto a piece of trash. The action is the same, it's just the item in question that's different.

This is not what happened here at all. The actions needed to activate the fuel cutoff switches are not similar to any other action a pilot would want to make during takeoff.

The form of the action isn’t necessarily what’s stored. They may have memorized something as “fourth action” or some other mnemonic mechanism

Now try to design a plane that also lets you rapidly shutoff fuel to both engines in case of fire.

How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory

What about up on the overhead panel where the other engine start controls are?

Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle

Also the fire suppression system is a different activation (covered pull handles I think)

> How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory

The switches are already pretty distinct - but that only reduces failures, it can never eliminate them entirely.

> Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle

More complexity also means more failure modes. You don't want it to be impossible to shut down the engines due to a broken throttle sensor.

And a gun that doesn't let you point it at your face. And a knife that doesn't let you cut yourself. And a car that doesn't let you accelerate into a static object. And...

Hey my car won’t let me accelerate into a static object. It’s so good it will even slam on the brakes when driving 5mph in a parking garage because it thinks parked cars are oncoming traffic.

"Sent into terrain in seconds by flipping a switch" is both too inaccurate and feels too cursory to take as impetus for serious design criticism, especially when the extensive preliminary report explicitly does not recommend any design changes with the current information.

Hilarious how Hacker News routinely bashes software managers who don’t understand a problem space and give vague and impossible goals. But somehow “just don’t let an aircraft fly itself into the ground” is a reasonable statement.

Is this Hacker News person in the room with us right now?

Are we in a room together?

If we are going to pretend that Hacker News is a single person who should have consistent opinions on different topics then we might as well pretend that we are in a room together.

You might as well refuse to place CNN and Fox News on the political spectrum with the same argument.

HN has somewhat democratic editorial tools and thus majority opinions on HN are very clear.