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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

#781

Post by grepfru_it »

histriosum wrote: post #699
noqc wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder suicide angle isn't particularly worthy of assumption yet. Have you ever put your phone in the fridge? Pilots deactivate the fuel cutoff at the end of the final taxi to the gate. This makes flipping these switches a practiced maneuver , capable of being performed without conscious thought, regardless of whether they came with safety locks installed. Brain farts are a real phenomenon, and an accidental fuel…

> The report is actually a little cagey about whether the locks were properly installed on these switches. Said locks are supposedly optional. The locks/gates on the switches are definitely NOT optional. There was an SAIB about some switches that may have been installed improperly. It didn't result in an AD, which likely means the extent was limited or potentially even nil. The switches were moved to cutoff with a on…

The switch must be lifted and turned. The optional posts block you from inadvertently knocking the switch (that you must pull up and turn).

I second that it’s not an accidental motion, you must actively manipulate the switch. But just like your turn signal in your car, it is muscle memory when you use it. I just wonder what action the pilot mistook the fuel cutoff for. Looking around the cockpit shows just how unique those switches are and not something you mistake with another common activity.

Pretty sad day if this was an intentional action

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#782

Post by histriosum »

noqc wrote: post #780
histriosum wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The report is actually a little cagey about whether the locks were properly installed on these switches. Said locks are supposedly optional. The locks/gates on the switches are definitely NOT optional. There was an SAIB about some switches that may have been installed improperly. It didn't result in an AD, which likely means the extent was limited or potentially even nil. The switches were moved to cutoff with a on…

> one second delay did the report say a one second delay or that the two switches were turned off at consecutive seconds? The latter is what I remembered, but I'll check again.

The report can be found here: https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Repo...

> did the report say a one second delay or that the two switches were turned off at consecutive seconds?

The report states, on page 14: 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.

"with a time gap of 01 sec" seems fairly clear. The final report will have more granularity, but I don't think that's very ambiguous.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#783

Post by grepfru_it »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #698
noqc wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder suicide angle isn't particularly worthy of assumption yet. Have you ever put your phone in the fridge? Pilots deactivate the fuel cutoff at the end of the final taxi to the gate. This makes flipping these switches a practiced maneuver , capable of being performed without conscious thought, regardless of whether they came with safety locks installed. Brain farts are a real phenomenon, and an accidental fuel…

If you were correct, the only situation it would happen in is when the pilot flying asks for X to happen, and the pilot monitoring instead does Y. Pilots don’t just randomly reach over and screw with the controls. Everything is called out, and as far as I know there were no callouts here (e.g. “gear up”). This is a bit like someone parking their car, pulling the handbrake, turning off the car and putting their keys i…

Look at a 787 cockpit. There are no other switches like that anywhere in the vicinity of those cutoff switches.

This is like pulling the handbrake on the highway when you’re trying to use your high beams

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#784

Post by grepfru_it »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #687
tim333 wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning the fuel off seems roughly equivalent to turning the ignition off when you've parked your car. It's really something rather unlikely to do as a brain fart during takeoff.

Most commercial aircraft have quite a few more buttons, knobs, levers, dials, etc than a car.

You have to lift and turn these knobs. Hard pressed to think of other knobs like this one. Especially that there are none like it anywhere near those cutoff switches. It seems intentionally designed this way

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#785

Post by noqc »

histriosum wrote: post #782
noqc wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one second delay did the report say a one second delay or that the two switches were turned off at consecutive seconds? The latter is what I remembered, but I'll check again.

The report can be found here: https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Repo... > did the report say a one second delay or that the two switches were turned off at consecutive seconds? The report states, on page 14: 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…

You are right, I was remembering the description of turning the switches back on.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#786

Post by sabujp »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #629

Assuming this is a murder-suicide and not a mistake or malfunction somehow, it's very damning of the FAA's policy to revoke the pilot's licenses of anyone seeking treatment for mental health issues. This was in India and thus not FAA jurisdiction, but it still would be a case where an untreated mental health issue lead to hundreds of deaths. By making pilots choose between their careers & medical treatment (since the…

Captain Steve discusses mental health issues amongst pilots during his discussion of the AI events after this most recent news. He's a trained counselor who got into counseling pilots exactly because of mental health issues he's seen with colleagues and students https://youtu.be/MD64uYK926o?t=742 .

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#787

Post by noqc »

tim333 wrote: post #686
noqc wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder suicide angle isn't particularly worthy of assumption yet. Have you ever put your phone in the fridge? Pilots deactivate the fuel cutoff at the end of the final taxi to the gate. This makes flipping these switches a practiced maneuver , capable of being performed without conscious thought, regardless of whether they came with safety locks installed. Brain farts are a real phenomenon, and an accidental fuel…

Turning the fuel off seems roughly equivalent to turning the ignition off when you've parked your car. It's really something rather unlikely to do as a brain fart during takeoff.

Putting your phone in the fridge seems like a pretty crazy thing to do, but we do it sometimes. Plane crashes are very rare.

I don't fly a lot of planes, but I do know what muscle memory is like, and sometimes it misfires. Misfires are rare, but then, so are plane crashes.

The emergency fuel cutoff should not be a practiced maneuver.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#788

Post by repeekad »

throw0101a wrote: post #736
sillysaurusx wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary: https://youtu.be/988j2-4CdgM?si=G39BwNy1zJEeUi2k The whole reason a pilot made that video is because there’s a huge problem in the airline industry right now.

Xyla Foxlin lost her PPL because her IUD was replaced, and how the new one (initially) released chemicals caused mood changes: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj0H8oVS7qg

A must watch for anyone interested in pilots and mental health

Many of her videos were about her dream of being a pilot, and a few trolls on the internet reporting her grounded them

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#789

Post by fc417fc802 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #767
yuliyp wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dehumanizing them. It's depiloting them. Not everyone should be a commercial airline pilot, no matter how much they may want to be one.

It is explicitly dehumanizing them by saying they’re not allowed to be pilots despite having issues. Claiming that it’s not is again part of the problem. You can’t imagine what it’s like to worry about losing your career because of something you’re forced to keep secret, and is entirely treatable. That’s the kind of barbarism that future generations will look back on us and shake their heads at. I hope you never have…

Without necessarily taking a side (I don't know enough about the specifics of the FAA policy or the various incidents over the years) I'd like to suggest that you are rather missing the point of the person you are responding to.

Take your argument to the extreme. Suppose someone has a physical or mental issue that renders them unable to reliably judge a certain type of situation or undertake some action that must be made consistently and repeatedly for safe flight. Presumably such a person has no business in a cockpit, let alone on a plane with hundreds of passengers on board?

The above clearly demonstrates that there are certain minimum requirements for practical reasons and that not everyone in the population is necessarily expected to meet them. It isn't a value judgment but rather an observation about the reality of the world we inhabit.

So the person you are responding to here is suggesting that suicidal ideations might be incompatible with the safety expectations of piloting a passenger airliner. Meaningful disagreement would need to somehow address the practical concern as opposed to deflecting with an appeal to emotion.

A related example that might be worth considering would be someone who suffered from severe and debilitating panic attacks. Or someone deemed to be at particularly high risk of having a heart attack. Or any number of other potentially debilitating conditions that can have sudden and unpredictable onset.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#790

Post by fc417fc802 »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #519
Mawr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just your brain associating the bathroom with the act of brushing your teeth, and therefore doing it automatically upon the trigger of entering the bathroom. It bears no resemblance to the accidental activation of a completely different button. The other poster's correction: "it’s like brushing your teeth with razor" is apt. Touching the fuel cutoff switches is not part of any procedure remotely relevant to th…

I agree. Has anyone here unplugged their mouse instead of pressing caps lock by mistake?

Do you unplug your mouse so frequently that it has become muscle memory?
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