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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

#871

Post by maxbond »

ars wrote: post #869
maxbond wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 It's not really acceptable to say that it's not economical to do something about that, or unnecessary based on outdated flooding models.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.

You're deploying a recent disaster, that killed scores of people, as evidence that people want something done when it isn't appropriate - and you aren't even willing to take a stance on whether what was done was appropriate? That's pretty weak tea. It really undermines your argument. If you aren't willing to take a stand on that, use a different example. Otherwise you aren't saying anything.

You're calling on people to have more nuanced discussions that include tradeoffs, but you retreat immediately from the implication that we're discussing people's lives. That's trying to have your cake and eat it too. Tradeoffs are about balancing different budgets, and it's not just a monetary budget, one of those is a budget of people's lives.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#873

Post by twelve40 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #696
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…

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…

> Current policy lead directly to that one fellow to lock the cockpit door and slam the plane into a hillside

While obviously the incidents are terrible, do you really think he would self-report, voluntarily endure 6+ months of therapy and come back like new, if only the current policy didn't lead him to do what he did?

Totally armchair, but I think people like the German dude and allegedly (but who knows) the Malaysian Zaharie are far gone. The only thing that can help is mandatory health checks, and even then who knows if it's possible to screen for everything.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#874

Post by pertymcpert »

belter wrote: post #862
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 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 ma…

That doesn't make sense. If a pilot wanted to deliberately cut off the engine there's no reason they couldn't do at that time. The time difference between the switches being one second shows it was more likely to be deliberate, not less. An accidental hit would result in both happening at the same time, not with a time delay.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#875

Post by yread »

afro88 wrote: post #532
yread wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On pprune there is a professional pilot that says they had multiple instances of inadverent switching off fuel switches. They do it every startup, shutdown and training captains (the captain on this flight was pilot not flying, he had >10k hours) do it all the time in the sim to trigger engine out scenario during training

I pull my handbrake every time I park my car, but never mistake it for the windshield wiper while the car is moving

There is no shortage of people who press the wrong pedal or button in a car or elsewhere. But of course it could never happen to you, you're special!

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#876

Post by account42 »

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…

> Brain farts are a real phenomenon, and an accidental fuel cutoff most closely resembles the transcript from within the cockpit.

What transcript? We only got a few potentially re-phrased bits of what was said. That the preliminary report is very careful about not implicating either pilot is not evidence of anything except that the investigative team is not yet 100% sure on the matter.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#877

Post by account42 »

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…

> Moving one of them by accident would be impossible

Improbable, not impossible.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#878

Post by account42 »

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…

> seems fairly clear

Not at all. First of all writing it as "01" begs the question if there is a typo (is that really supposed to mean 1 or 0.1?) but even without that only specifying the interval to a second precision makes is much more likely that the difference is between samples of the switch state that are recorded at that rate.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#879

Post by account42 »

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…

> Pilots don’t just randomly reach over and screw with the controls.

Plenty of crashes have resulted from Pilots not acting 100% by the book.

> and as far as I know there were no callouts here (e.g. “gear up”)

Unfortunately we don't have a full CVR transcript.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#880

Post by account42 »

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.

But we can already conclude that something unlikely did in fact happen, otherwise there were more fatal 787 crashes. I don't think "it's unlikely" is a good argument for dismissing potential causes here.
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