i highly doubt an IC could make something like this happen without approval from somebody. It would be a huge risk.
Also relating to easter eggs, anecdotally I think there are far fewer of them in software these days for just that reason: when a developer puts in an easter egg, it's hard to prove categorically that its addition wouldn't have some unintended effect, and possibly very embarrassing to the company if a major issue was traced back to some joke added by a developer for lulz. Uncomfortable questions would be asked. Imagine if adding an easter egg to Windows ended up leading to the grounding of all flights, or caused a life support system to behave improperly. etc.
I know MS specifically banned easter eggs a long time ago on these grounds, I think it's a fireable offense but could be wrong.
> i highly doubt an IC could make something like this happen without approval from somebody. It would be a huge risk.
I'd bet at least beer money that this was some "IC" career 747 guy (or bunch of guys) who organised, planned, and authorised this without actual authority, because he was "a 747 guy" and he tendered his retirement 3 months ago and today was his last day. And a delivery pilot who was either in on it or was prepared to claim plausible deniability and that he was just following the autopilots pre-planned route, which he assumed was fully authorised.
My manager sends me videos of particularly challenging video game things he's accomplished. And links to fun games. Managers are people, too; there's plenty of good ones.
The pilot just took off in Seattle, engaged autopilot, and sat back watching for warning lights until it was time to land.
I'll bet he knew exactly what was going on, because the perpetrator clued them in, and made sure they had suitable ass covering paperwork to show they were just flying the flight as per the delivered flight plan.
There may have been, maybe even probably was, a middling-senior manager involved here, but he was a "747 guy" as well, and today was his last day before retirement as well. And I'd guess all the "747 guys" have been there long enough to know exactly how to bury this paper trail, and possibly one guy who's prepared to "take the fall" if a board member or the customer bursts a coronary artery and demands a full forensic blame storm investigation - "Oh yeah, Bob signed off on that. He's got cancer, probably only a few weeks left, he was so happy to see the last one ever built fly, he started on the tools building them in the 80s. Last I heard he'd just sold up everything and spent his entire life savings paying off all his kids and grandkids houses and college loans. What a guy, huh?"
