[Mark Caswell]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49672351

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alanred13

[cwoodward]

Pilot very much in the hot seat in more ways than one then !

[flyingdutchman1]

How can coffee or any ‘hot’ drink melt a button. Ridiculous.

[capetonianm]

‘Melting the buttons’ is obviously rubbish, but any liquid spilled into switchgear or instrumentation is likely to affect its operation.

[openfly]

Spilt

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capetonianm

[capetonianm]

It is rare for anyone to be able to correct my English (other than typing mistakes) so whilst I appreciate the correction, I looked into this. ‘Spilled’ is a perfectly acceptable alternative for ‘spilt’, being the original past tense form of ‘spill’.

That said, ‘spilt’ is the commoner and more modern usage, but both are correct. Interestingly, the BBC article uses ‘spilled’ and I suspect that ‘spilt’ is a USAmericanism that has crept surreptitiously into English!

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Seat62k

[cwoodward]

Fully agree with the above.

Oxford dictionary:
verb
past tense: spilled; past participle: spilled
1.
cause or allow (liquid) to flow over the edge of its container, especially unintentionally.
“you’ll spill that tea if you’re not careful”
synonyms: knock over, tip over, upset, overturn; cowp
“everyone jumped and Kevin spilled his drink”
2.
INFORMAL
reveal (confidential information) to someone.
“she ought not to be spilling out her troubles to you”
synonyms: reveal, disclose, divulge, let out, leak, blurt out, babble, betray, make known, tell;

‘Spilt’
Irregular past tense verb of recent (past 100 years) American origin;

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Seat62k, Ahmad

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