[JumpCrisscross]

> Every human endeavour is constrained by resources

There is a difference between constraining activities based on resources at hand and adopting a hypothesis because it favours your resource constraints. (Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not.)

> Is this your first time hearing about humans being confused by complicated technology?

An airline using a free consumer tool [1] to track its planes is not a problem of complicated technology. (FlightExplorer has a professional edition, but it runs natively. If flightops were looking at a website, they were essentially using Google Flights to track their planes.)

[1] https://travel.flightexplorer.com

[krisoft]

> Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not.

Yes. And there is nothing to indicate that they concluded that the keys must be under the lights. In fact there is every reason to assume that they choose this assumption to fit their resource constraints. Because the other option would have been to not even start searching.

But turns out if you assume people are stupid, then they will appear stupid.

> An airline using a free consumer tool [1] to track its planes is not a problem of complicated technology.

Everything about aviation is complicated technology. The fact that there are free tools which provide almost the same answer the professional tools do, but can be misleading in edge cases is further evidence that the technology is complicated.

Also this is the problem with vacuous statements. The statement, I quote "What in the actual fuck." does not let us know what the commenter found curious about the situation. I thought it was that an operator misread the display. You think it is that the operator's had a "free" display instead of a professional one. But who knows. We could even ask why is it the airline who was bumbling around instead of just calling the ATC that the airplane is overdue and letting them figure out with their professional tools and training. Or maybe they are just surprised that airplanes sometimes fly and sometimes not. Who knows.

[JumpCrisscross]

> there is nothing to indicate that they concluded that the keys must be under the lights

"ATSB chose to assume that the plane spiraled in close" based on their resource constraints. The resources are the light. They ruled out--according to this source--a hypothesis based on where the light was.

> the other option would have been to not even start searching

Why?! Even when ATSB chose their hypothesis the entire area wasn't searched.

> there are free tools which provide almost the same answer the professional tools do

Not for flightops! (And not this one.)

> but can be misleading in edge cases is further evidence that the technology is complicated

Have you flown a plane? This isn't an edge case issue, it means MA flightops was always blind on takeoff and approach for its entire fleet. That they thought this website was appropriate for the task represents a massive lack of training and protocol, let alone tooling or oversight.

> You think it is that the operator's had a "free" display instead of a professional one. But who knows

The article said MA flightops "were tracking the plane on the Flight Explorer website" (top comment). I pointed out that FE doesn't have a web-based professional app (comment you responded to). This isn't a "who knows" situation.

> We could even ask why is it the airline who was bumbling around instead of just calling the ATC that the airplane is overdue

Read the article at the top of this thread. Dempsey/Cloudberg goes into this in detail.

[krisoft]

> They ruled out--according to this source--a hypothesis based on where the light was.

That is your reading of the sentence. "choose to assume" does not mean that they ruled out other options. It especially does not mean that they ruled out other options when it is combined with the second part of the sentence which describe that the reason they took this assumption is due to resource constraints.

> Have you flown a plane?

Yes.

> This isn't a "who knows" situation.

You are misunderstanding the whole paragraph. The "who knows" situation is what you, JumpCrisscross was thinking when you wrote "What in the actual fuck.". If instead of emotional venting you would have wrote a complete and full sentence we would not have had to speculate what you are incredulous about. Clear?