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Preliminary report into Air India crash released

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#81

Post by nine_k »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #65
suyash wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a possibility that they got hacked and remotely toggled ?

Sadly not. It’s a physical switch with no capability of a remote toggle. The flight data recorder clearly shows one was toggled off within a second of the other, which rules out almost every non-intentional scenario.

Is this a switch that has a dedicated connection to the corresponding cutoff valve? Or does it go through some common digital bus that passes commands? If so, how well is this bus protected?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#83

Post by janice1999 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #53
cosmicgadget wrote: post #47

The report says the co-pilot was flying so it's most likely the pilot cut the fuel?

Correct. Which means it’s the older of the two.

The report does not identify which pilot said what. Attempting to extrapolate their identities is speculation.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#84

Post by rogerrogerr »

anonymousiam wrote: post #71
sillysaurusx wrote: post #57

[flagged]

The report says the co-pilot was flying. The report says the black box reports the fuel cutoff switches being activated. That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them, it just means that the fly-by-wire system reacted to a fuel cutoff event. "The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fue…

> That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them

It does:

1. Those switches have physical interlocks and cannot be manipulated by any computer system.

2. The flight data recorder is measuring the position of the switches; they aren't inferring the position from some system state. There's a "position of this switch" channel.

The switches were physically moved in the cockpit, that's basically ground truth. The question now is who and why.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#85

Post by darth_avocado »

lazystar wrote: post #17
decimalenough wrote: post #11

> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The swi…

https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/NM-18-33 well hold your horses there... from the FAA in their 2019 report linked above: > The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to sup…

One would assume a toggle like that would come with blaring alarms and blinking lights… right? Right??

Edit: It also seems like the engine cutoff is immediate after the toggle. I wonder if a built in delay would make sense for safety.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#86

Post by K0balt »

dcreater wrote: post #46
decimalenough wrote: post #11

> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The swi…

Do you know if the mechanical position of the switch guarantees its electronic state without any possibility for hardware malfunction? If no, then you are claiming a person made one of the most grave acts of inhumanity ever. This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction

The time between the two switches being activated and then them being switched back on after being noticed strongly suggests that they were actually manipulated. Malice looke very likely to me. An investigation into the pilots life may turn something up, I guess.

It’s worth noting that Premeditation or “intention” doesn’t have to factor into this.

Studies of survivors of impulse suicides (jumping off of bridges etc) indicate that many of them report having no previous suicidal ideation, no intention or plan to commit suicide, and in many cases no reported depression or difficulties that might encourage suicide.

Dark impulses exist and they don’t always get caught in time by the supervisory conscious process. Most people have experienced this in its more innocuous forms, the call of the void and whatnot, but many have also been witness to thoughtless destructive acts that defy reason and leave the perpetrator confused and in denial.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#87

Post by codefeenix »

fsckboy wrote: post #72

it makes sense to me that the pilot who said "I did not do it" actually did do it without realizing it, was supposed to be putting the landing gear up when he committed a muscle memory mistake. it happened around the time the landing gear should be up, and this explanation matches what was said in the cockpit, and the fact that the landing gear wasn't retracted. I think this idea was even floated initially by the you…

even though that raising the gear is a up motion and fuelcut off is a down motion?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#89

Post by sillysaurusx »

marze wrote: post #82
sillysaurusx wrote: post #57

[flagged]

You mention "brain fart". There is certainly a long history of pilots selecting the wrong lever, or wrong switch. So, it is possible the pilot who denied switching the fuel off thought he had switched something else.

My understanding is that after several incidents of pilots shutting off the wrong engine, the training was overhauled so that from day one they treat fuel switches as sacred. I heard that it’s required to ask for confirmation before toggling the switch, just to be absolutely certain. It’s not really something that can be done by muscle memory during flight, and especially not during takeoff.

If he was trying to do something else, he would have called it out. E.g. an audible “gear up.”

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#90

Post by postingawayonhn »

dcreater wrote: post #46
decimalenough wrote: post #11

> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The swi…

Do you know if the mechanical position of the switch guarantees its electronic state without any possibility for hardware malfunction? If no, then you are claiming a person made one of the most grave acts of inhumanity ever. This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction

There is also audio of the pilots discussing the issue.
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