751–760 of 924 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the ground you are over is a good landing spot, your best chance is to cut off the fuel to that engine ASAP.
All I’m saying is in those situations it should involve another toggle or pedal that needs to be pushed to cut off the engines so it’s outside the realm of muscle memory.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Those switches cannot be accidentally flipped Yes, unbelievable things can happen. There are crashes where the pilot got discombobulated and a crash resulted. For another example, there are at least two crashes I recall (and I am sure there are many more) where the pilot pulled back to recover from a stall despite being trained endlessly to push forward to recover. (And they killed everyone on board.) Pilots get co…
Interesting. "Cacoethes" means "malignant" in Greek. I didn't know the other meaning in English.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide. Remember that incident where a cop pulled out his taser and tased the suspect? Except he pulled out his pistol and fired it. The taser looks nothing like a pistol, feels nothing like it, yet it is still possible to confuse the two in the heat of the moment.
What were they confusing the switches with though? Are there two other switches they would be toggling at that phase? Perhaps they were very very confused and thought they had just arrived at the terminal?
> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered…
The F-16 EPU is to keep the flight controls powered so the plane doesn't immediately become uncontrollable following engine failure. The EPU doesn't provide thrust of any kind. The 787 and nearly every other commercial aircraft with powered flight controls [1] (fly-by-wire or traditional) has emergency power available via RAT and/or APU, and any fly-by-wire aircraft has batteries to keep the flight control computers…
Your momma so fat…
But seriously, is there a commercial aircraft that can’t climb on only engine?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Delay is probably worse - now you're further disassociating the effect of the action from the action itself, breaking the usual rule: if you change something, and don't like the effect, change it back.
This makes me wonder. Is there no audible alarm when the fuel is set to cutoff?
Any of these would trigger an unmistakable audible "BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP" to draw your attention to the screen so that you could see what the caution was. These messages are right next to the engine N1 indications anyway, so it would be immediately obvious that one or more of the engines was spooling down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On Jul 12th 2025 (UTC) India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2…
The one thing automatic system failure theory can't explain is whether there is a reverse connect from the machine back to the switches where if the machine decides to cut off fuel, would the physical switches toggle to cut-off or stay in run position while the fuel is actually cut off, this would require an actuator setup to flip the switches from inside the system which there is no documentation of if that is even…
[1] https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/NM-18-33.pdf
[2] https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/187/honeywell_hwscs06627_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On Jul 12th 2025 (UTC) India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2…
> I don't know why online communities have been so quick to gravitate towards the murder/suicide theory. Because the hardware failure theories seem preposterously far-fetched and require an unnecessary multiplication of deities. Your ghost in the machine needs to be “just so” so that it can cause both switches to be read in “cutoff” nearly simultaneously. Then, 10 seconds later one of the switches needs to be read in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>since they can't continue as pilots if they seek treatment) You have your facts wrong. Pilots can and do fly if they have mental health diagnoses, as long as they are well managed and there is no history of psychosis or suidical ideation. This is how it should be. https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/app_process/exam_tech/item47/a...
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.
But a pilot with suicidal ideations, or taking hallucinogens, like Emerson from Alaska Airlines Flight 2509 (the flight discussed in the linked video), would not be allowed to fly. And that's exactly the way it should be...
The issue is that many pilots don't seek treatment for mental issues because they imagine that they'll be grounded if they do, even though FAA policy, and most airlines' policy, is to allow them to continue flying.
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…
First of all, thank you for calling attention to this. You’re absolutely right, despite what others are saying here. That’s why there’s a movement for reforms. Secondly, yes, it was likely a deliberate action to cut off the fuel switches, as you say. You are absolutely right that there’s an epidemic in the airline industry that forces pilots to stay quiet rather than risk their careers if they’re dealing with mental…
The problem is that many people in aviation imagine that they need to conceal their problems. And they point to videos like this one as proof of that, ignoring that the events of discussed in the video are actually proof of the opposite.
Emerson (the suicidal pilot in the video from Alaska Airlines Flight 2509) self-medicated himself using hallucinogenic substances and developed suicidal ideations, because he didn't seek treatment (like therapy) for his mental issues after the death of a friend. If he had sought treatment, he'd still be flying today because he wouldn't have tried to kill several dozen people, and he would have learned to cope with his depression.