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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

#861

Post by Straw »

WalterBright wrote: post #801
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…

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…

I'd much rather have a mentally ill person with treatment flying the plane than without!

You don't get to choose "no mental illness" because of the bad incentives of hiding them!

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#862

Post by belter »

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…

The evidence points to inadvertent fuel cutoff switch movement rather than pilot error, or intentional pilot action. Most likely cause being locking mechanism failure combined with takeoff acceleration forces.

Investigation and preliminary report is not showing critical evidence that would help clarify. Like the full transcript of pilot conversations that is clearly already available, and if these switches had any maintenance in the last year.

The fact that both pilots denied moving the switches, combined with the extremely short timeline, makes mechanical/electronic failure the most probable cause.

Note the Critical Sequence:

08:08:39 UTC: Aircraft lifts off (air/ground sensors transition)

08:08:42 UTC: Maximum airspeed of 180 knots reached

08:08:42 UTC: IMMEDIATELY after max speed, both fuel cutoff switches transition from RUN to CUTOFF (1 second apart)

08:08:47 UTC: Both engines below minimum idle, RAT deploys

08:08:52 UTC: Engine 1 switch returns to RUN

08:08:56 UTC: Engine 2 switch returns to RUN

So only 3 seconds between liftoff and fuel cutoff. Extremely short window for deliberate pilot action...

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#863

Post by ars »

bonoboTP wrote: post #600
MangoToupe wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're focused on whether or not the pilot cares (or is even alive), you've lost the plot. The point is to keep passengers alive regardless of the pilot. There's no real point to considering what happens if the pilot wants to murder people on board. Of course they will succeed....

The thing is, people always want something to be done . And politicians want to do something . No matter what kind of action it is, someone knifed a kid on the street, we must ban knives of a certain length. A pilot downs a plane while the other leaves the cockpit - we must mandate two pilots always present. Someone hides explosives in his shoe - we must X-ray all shoes of all passengers forever. Etc. The human brain…

I'm seeing exactly this with the Texas floods. People are criticizing them for not installing an expensive warning system. "Do something!"

But they decided that based on the frequency of floods it was not the best place to spend money.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#864

Post by ninkendo »

vachina wrote: post #827
ninkendo wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the aircraft being familiar makes it worse: if you're used to going through a certain motion to do a thing, it may be one of things your brain can do without really thinking about it much, which is where the danger comes in. I've engaged my wipers when meaning to shift gears before, in my truck which has a steering column shifter. After driving the truck for years. I have ADHD and I very often let my brain go…

There is no temporal nor spatial adjacency to the switches. The switches are equivalent to the ignition on your car, you operate it in the beginning and end of your trip, and there is nothing during the trip that will involve manipulating this switch.

There’s been at least 2 times I’ve turned my ignition switch while driving. (Luckily it was into the “on” position instead of off.)

Everyone in this thread thinking “these actions are temporally and physically distinct and therefore impossible for anyone to confuse” isn’t really thinking about the problem the right way. It’s not that I’m actually confusing two actions. It’s that I’m accidentally allowing my brain to perform one action when I meant to let it perform another action. “Allowing” is an important word here, because it illustrates that my brain is capable of doing this on its own without me thinking about it, and often will do it on its own, if I let it.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#865

Post by maxbond »

ars wrote: post #863
bonoboTP wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, people always want something to be done . And politicians want to do something . No matter what kind of action it is, someone knifed a kid on the street, we must ban knives of a certain length. A pilot downs a plane while the other leaves the cockpit - we must mandate two pilots always present. Someone hides explosives in his shoe - we must X-ray all shoes of all passengers forever. Etc. The human brain…

I'm seeing exactly this with the Texas floods. People are criticizing them for not installing an expensive warning system. "Do something!" But they decided that based on the frequency of floods it was not the best place to spend money.

That was a bad decision. They had major problems during the winter of 2021 too. It's all well to talk about tradeoffs but clearly Texas has under prepared for major weather events and it's getting people killed (not to single them out - they're certainly not the only ones). It's not a coincidence that there were 2 catastrophes in 4 years.

Acknowledging tradeoffs doesn't mean there aren't real problems or that something doesn't need to be done, it's only meaningful when comparing different proposed solutions. What is your alternative to the early warning system with better tradeoffs?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#866

Post by wkat4242 »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #633
wkat4242 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an impossible maneuver. Glider pilots do this all the time especially if they don't have spoilers

I would say it is much much harder. The wing configuration of an aircraft dictates the minimum glide speed. The more angled (for a better word) the wing, the higher the speed it needs to be at to be able to glide and not stall.

You probably mean 'swept'? That's normally the term used.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#867

Post by ars »

maxbond wrote: post #865
ars wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing exactly this with the Texas floods. People are criticizing them for not installing an expensive warning system. "Do something!" But they decided that based on the frequency of floods it was not the best place to spend money.

That was a bad decision. They had major problems during the winter of 2021 too. It's all well to talk about tradeoffs but clearly Texas has under prepared for major weather events and it's getting people killed (not to single them out - they're certainly not the only ones). It's not a coincidence that there were 2 catastrophes in 4 years. Acknowledging tradeoffs doesn't mean there aren't real problems or that somethi…

> What is your alternative to the early warning system with better tradeoffs?

I know little about this, I'm simply responding to the people who constantly demand that people do something, anything, and insist that all possible actions be taken without consideration to their cost.

The real world is full of tradeoffs, and it's easy in hindsight to say "That was a bad decision", it's not that easy ahead of time.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#868

Post by maxbond »

ars wrote: post #867
maxbond wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a bad decision. They had major problems during the winter of 2021 too. It's all well to talk about tradeoffs but clearly Texas has under prepared for major weather events and it's getting people killed (not to single them out - they're certainly not the only ones). It's not a coincidence that there were 2 catastrophes in 4 years. Acknowledging tradeoffs doesn't mean there aren't real problems or that somethi…

> What is your alternative to the early warning system with better tradeoffs? I know little about this, I'm simply responding to the people who constantly demand that people do something, anything, and insist that all possible actions be taken without consideration to their cost. The real world is full of tradeoffs, and it's easy in hindsight to say "That was a bad decision", it's not that easy ahead of time.

The 2021 incident is why we know it was a bad decision. They had 4 years of warning. Extreme weather is going to continue becoming more common. Texas is going to continue to face extreme weather. If they don't prepare, people are going to die. It's not really acceptable to say that it's not economical to do something about that, or unnecessary based on outdated flooding models. When there's an urgent problem - yeah, you do have to do something about it. Tradeoffs are useful to decide what we do, not whether.

I think you do your argument a disservice by using that particular example. If you're going to imply some lives were simply uneconomical to save, and when challenged say that you aren't familiar enough with the matter to discuss what else could've been done, it just comes off callous. I'm not left with the impression you don't think the alarm system was necessary because you understand the tradeoffs.

The problem isn't that Texans are valuing their lives too much and insisting on too many safeguards. The problem is that the safeguards are insufficient.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#869

Post by ars »

maxbond wrote: post #868
ars wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is your alternative to the early warning system with better tradeoffs? I know little about this, I'm simply responding to the people who constantly demand that people do something, anything, and insist that all possible actions be taken without consideration to their cost. The real world is full of tradeoffs, and it's easy in hindsight to say "That was a bad decision", it's not that easy ahead of time.

The 2021 incident is why we know it was a bad decision. They had 4 years of warning. Extreme weather is going to continue becoming more common. Texas is going to continue to face extreme weather. If they don't prepare, people are going to die. It's not really acceptable to say that it's not economical to do something about that, or unnecessary based on outdated flooding models. When there's an urgent problem - yeah,…

I was deferring to the judgement of the local people.

I was not making my own decision on the tradeoffs.

Also, your implication that the tradeoff is lives is unfair, I don't think that's the tradeoff, rather I think they were expecting that other types of alerts would be sufficient.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#870

Post by nottorp »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #723
nottorp wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way i read what avherald highlighted is that a part that the manufacturer said should be replaced wasn't and failed as the manufacturer said it will. So it would point to the airline maintenance right now. What the bbc says is truncated and omits the info about the failing part, so people can point towards murder suicide because they don't have all the info. Which is why you should always read avherald first...

The avherald is reporting second hand reports of the Indian media. The EEC MN4 microcontroller is located on a control board on each engine. A dual failure seems improbable. The fuel cutoff switches are of a similar design to the 737 and most other Boeing aircraft. A failure in that design seems less likely than the most charitable explanation, that the copilot inadvertently went into the wrong mode of muscle memory.…

> The avherald is reporting second hand reports of the Indian media.

... which is more than the bbc one paragraph news item does?

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