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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

#901
post #875
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You moved the goalposts from "do something catastrophic by doing something completely unrelated to what you were trying to do" to "press the wrong pedal or button in a car or elsewhere"

We're talking about taking an action in a different place in the cockpit controls that has safeties built in to prevent accidental use... like pulling a handbrake by accident while the car is moving when you meant to put your wipers on

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#902
post #900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really the reason they object video recording in the cockpit ? If so I agree it's not a good enough reason.

Its more about concerns about Airlines using video to micro-manage pilots. I too would hate it if my manager was watching my every move while working so I can empathize.

that could be easily solved though. is the data in the black box being analyzed after each flight by the employer ?

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#903

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…

This is like saying that we've had a problem with people piloting with pneumonia, so anybody sniffling or taking sudafed won't be allowed to pilot (the FAA is fine with sudafed). One hopes that getting pilots early treatment for incipient mental health issues would help ensure that they don't wind up with more serious issues.

It looks like the FAA has within the last few years gotten chiller about some antidepressants, but that they still require an elaborate and complicated process to approve use of them.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#904
post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Those don't have to be the only two options. You can also criminalize hiding your mental illness as a pilot while incentivizing self-reporting via sufficiently generous disability insurance.

If you criminalize hiding your mental illness, you can be sure that people will hide it! Even if the alternative has some money attached.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what Occam's razor means. It means that after you have exhausted all options to rule out competing hypotheses, you choose the simplest one that remains, for the time being. Consider some explanations that are consistent with the evidence presented so far. And remember that the purpose of the investigation is to come up with actionable conclusions. 1. One of the pilots randomly flipped and crashed the plane…

Given the fly by wire nature of 787 there is an also fourth option. The physical switch was not touched at all , and the software has a bug under some rare conditions which cut off the supply to both engines.

I think that's some extreme speculation bordering on conspiracy theory that would need evidence to back up.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the fly by wire nature of 787 there is an also fourth option. The physical switch was not touched at all , and the software has a bug under some rare conditions which cut off the supply to both engines.

Extremely unlikely, since we can hear the other pilot ask why he turned the fuel switches. If it was an electrical glitch, he wouldn’t be able to see that they are in the cutoff position.

Exactly. 80% chance it was the one who asked who didn't do it, but we'll never know.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this Hacker News person in the room with us right now?

Are we in a room together?

If we are going to pretend that Hacker News is a single person who should have consistent opinions on different topics then we might as well pretend that we are in a room together.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we in a room together?

If we are going to pretend that Hacker News is a single person who should have consistent opinions on different topics then we might as well pretend that we are in a room together.

You might as well refuse to place CNN and Fox News on the political spectrum with the same argument.

HN has somewhat democratic editorial tools and thus majority opinions on HN are very clear.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i worked in many companies but I always remember one , where during a public chat in the middle of an open office the programmer next to me (who was always conniving but I just ignored it ), said incorrectly something akin to " yes I know all about that source control its... based on locking " , the whole point was that although locking technically occurs, the SC would allow different coders to work on it at the same…

Yeah, in the UK you lose your job when you make a fuss, not when you misbehave. That's my experience.

In most places you lose your job when you don't do it well.

Re: Preliminary report into Air India crash released

#910
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be defective switch springs, fatigue-induced muscle memory error, or something else. The pilot who did it saying he did not may not have realized what he did. It's pretty common under high workload when you flip the wrong switch or move a control the wrong way to think that you did what you intended to do, not what you actually did. That said Boeing could take a page out of the Garmin GI275. When power is re…

When your engine catches on fire/blows apart on takeoff you want to cut fuel as fast as possible.

First, the fire handles would override any delay and cut fuel (and other things) immediately.

Second: the window of time where you don't have enough altitude (aka time) to restart is relatively small. So this could easily be a temporary protection.

It is difficult to find exact data on this but restart to significant thrust seems to be in the 30-60s range. If you run the numbers on climb rate and glide time the possible danger zone is relatively small, a few minutes after takeoff at most.

Is this an extremely rare event? Yes. But most other accident causes are also rare, regardless of whether they are pilot error or mechanical.

For example: you might think no pilot would deploy the thrust reversers in flight but system protection errors and/or mechanical failures have conspired to allow it and a bunch of people paid in blood to learn that reverser deployment in flight at altitude was actually unrecoverable - contrary to conventional wisdom at the time. It turned out everyone was flying around with a "kill everyone now" mechanism. In some cases with a much lower margin of safety than previously believed due to the aforementioned "conventional wisdom" that if it happened it wouldn't be a big deal.

Know what else isn't normally a big deal (relatively speaking)? Accidental shutdown of both engines. Because a single engine shutdown is easily recovered and the aircraft can fly on one engine. And dual engine shutdown is easily recovered with a restart if you have enough altitude. But it turns out there's a small window after takeoff where it is fatal.

Somewhat relatedly shutting down the wrong engine in an engine failure scenario is so common they explicitly train crews to slow down and not immediately shut down an engine after failure because rushing just leads to dual engine loss.

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