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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

#851

Post by 1970-01-01 »

panxyh wrote: post #840
1970-01-01 wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your opinion is valid but definitely doesn't align with any evidence.

What a shallow, copy-paste response. His statement was about a certain, obviously real tendency in general, existence of which is reasonable to assume there is enough research about. He objected not to the unlikelihood of an accidental manipulation, but to the potential flaw in your comparison (which was at best a valid opinion).

Can you elaborate on why you think I copied and pasted my response? There is no evidence of it existing anywhere other than my cerebrum:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Your+opinion+is+valid+but...

I think you're misarticulating my argument.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#852

Post by bronson »

userbinator wrote: post #285
bronson wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he would have asked the other pilot why the engines are shutting down. It seems a lot more probable that he glanced at the switches before asking such an explicit question.

Without listening to the CVR audio and knowing what they actually said, there's no evidence either way, and AFAIK they have not released that.

From the preliminary report, quote: "In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so."

I'm trying to understand your complaint here... you think you need to hear their voices with your own ears to believe it?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#853

Post by RA_Fisher »

blincoln wrote: post #697
gmokki wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that the engines cur of due to fault in the shared control system. And to restore power the pilots toggled the switches to off and then back on to get them running again. Hopefully the timestamps tell if the engines lost power before switches were turned off? Or is there some time window that was not recorded due to the lost power to systems?

This is one of the first scenarios that came to mind for me as well. i.e. hypothetically, no one flipped the switches to cutoff initially, but a glitch in a computer component caused the same effect, including some indication (a status light?) that the switches were in cutoff state. One of the pilots saw the indication, and asked the other. The other (truthfully) said they hadn't. Ten seconds of confusion later, one…

Also, when asked the pilot said they didn’t switch the fuel control off.

That seems like an important clue, bc it points at a possible glitch that could affect other aircraft.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#854

Post by WalterBright »

dwattttt wrote: post #824
WalterBright wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? I've never heard of anyone being cured of mental illness, just drugs that relieve the symptoms. The body develops resistance to the drugs, the drugs usually come with bad side effects, and patients often go off their meds. Pilots who develop a heart condition get their license revoked. Every pilot knows this. There's nothing fair about that, either. Fun fact - my Air Force dad told me that when an airplane w…

It seems trivial that it's better than option 1; in both cases a mentally ill person is flying the plane, and in one of them a health professional is involved in managing the condition. For option 2 I'll confess to not being sufficiently familiar with the gamut of what can be considered a mental illness, such that I couldn't tell you whether a person under management for such is a safer pilot than someone undiagnosed…

Mental health is indeed an inexact and poorly understood condition.

As pragmatic rule, if one is prescribed drugs for it, one is not fit for being a pilot.

I know several people who are prescribed drugs for mental conditions. I would not get on an airplane if they were the pilot. Nor would I get on one with a pilot with a heart condition. It doesn't mean they are bad people, it's just the way it is.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#855

Post by WalterBright »

golem14 wrote: post #805
WalterBright wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where the win is here: 1. If the pilot hides his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the airplane. 2. If the pilot gets treatment for his mental illness, a mentally ill person is flying the plane. P.S. When I was a teenager, I tried to join the Air Force to be a pilot like my dad. But since I wear glasses, there was no way. The AF was perfectly justified in not taking me, I understood that. I…

well in case 2, the pilot get treatment and a doctor will decide if she is fit to fly. That's not bulletproof but still better than case 1. And to your other point, it's easier to give up on your dream job when young and start with a career that you are a fit for, than to be kicked out after a huge sunk cost and maybe even half way to retirement (illnesses might not be known until later in life). Just as disappointin…

> But I salute you, fellow four-eyes!

I was prescribed glasses when I was 5. Since then, they have preserved my eyes from damage from at least 3 incidents. I no longer mind them - I like the protection!

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#856

Post by cryptonector »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #838
cryptonector wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44543536 I think we should not jump to conclusions yet.

I've been reading commentary on aviation forums like PPRuNe and the consensus amongst pilots and others in the field seems to be that "electrical glitch" is a near impossibility. Also, the report states "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". They wouldn't have said the switches transitioned from…

Thanks.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#857

Post by nswest23 »

noqc wrote: post #661
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…

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 it were possible for a trained pilot to "brain fart" cut fuel to a 787 as it is taking off that would be a huge design flaw.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#858

Post by benlivengood »

bingo-bongo wrote: post #828
patch_cable wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m more familiar with the 737 (as a hobby, not as a pilot), but for that aircraft the “loss of thrust on both engines” checklist has the start levers as the second item on the list. Note that in the checklist I am looking at the goal is to restart the engines rather than diagnose the failure and that involves these levers. I suspect you’d notice pretty quickly if they were not in the expected location.

Do you know if it says anything about restarting them simultaneously or not? I would think trying to restart engines one at a time would be preferred, over both of them at the same time - or maybe thats not how it works..?

Just from a systems perspective if the actions to restart the engines can be parallelized then they should be; maybe only one engine will start. You don't want the 50% (for 2-engine aircraft) chance that you spend time on the one that won't start before trying the other.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#859

Post by hrunt »

briandear wrote: post #529
0_-_0 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe as the PIC was guarding the lower end of the throttle he rested the rest of his hand on the panel cover below the throttle and, while pushing forward on the throttle, let the side of his hand slide down right onto the switches, the likeliness of which would have been exacerbated by a rough runway or a large bump. It's unlikely the left and right part of his hand would have contacted the cutoff switches at the s…

Nope. First of all, the FO was the “pilot flying” and thusly controls the throttle. The fuel shutoffs are on the left side, well clear of the range of motion throttle operation for the right seat. If the Captain were controlling throttles, it for some reason he could contort his wrist to accidentally open the red cutoff switch guards, the switches themselves move in the opposite direction of the pivot of the switch g…

You are wrong. The fuel shutoff switches are directly beneath the throttle levers, and they move down to cutoff, which is exactly the direction a hand beneath the throttle would move to accidentally switch them to cutoff.

Secondly, while the FO was flying the airplane and thus would have control of the throttles during rollout, the captain would certainly have his hand beneath the throttles in an observer position during at least part of the takeoff. And during takeoff, procedure would have the captain take over control of the throttle levers until rotation while the FO handled the yoke with both hands.

blancolirio[0] has two excellent video examples of 787 takeoffs within the cockpit showing FO-pilot takeoffs and both officers' actions during takeoff.

Page 10 of the Air India preliminary report[1] shows a picture of the fuel cutoff switches -- clearly labeled "FUEL CONTROL" with "RUN" in the up position and "CUTOFF" in the down position -- directly beneath the throttle levers.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA_UZeHZwSw [1] https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Repo...

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#860

Post by swores »

zamadatix wrote: post #657
swores wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's human nature to want to guess at possible explanations for things that are unusual and unexpected. If hearing those guesses annoys you, nobody is forcing you to read through comments on a thread of people making them! (I hope - sorry if you are being forced after all.)

Idle speculation is far from the only thing you won't find me supporting just because it's human nature. Thankfully, HN comment threads tend to include a lot more than just that kind of discussion, which is why I read them. Indeed there are lots of great details I didn't glean or fully understand in the report covered in the comments. That doesn't mean I will always agree with the comments (or that everyone will alwa…

Having just found myself in a similar situation to the one you were complaining about, I'd like to withdraw and apologise for my previous comment :D
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