Air India Probe Puts Early Focus on Pilots’ Actions and Plane’s Fuel Switches

[chopper]

WSJ suggests that the fuel to the engines was turned off. How did that thing get that far w no fuel flowing??

Preliminary findings indicate that switches controlling fuel flow to the jet’s two engines were turned off, leading to an apparent loss of thrust shortly after takeoff, the people said. Pilots use the switches to start the jet’s engines, shut them down, or reset them in certain emergencies.

The switches would normally be on during flight, and it is unclear how or why they were turned off, these people said. The people also said it was unclear whether the move was accidental or intentional, or whether there was an attempt to turn them back on.

If the switches were off, that could explain why the jet’s emergency-power generator—known as a ram air turbine, or RAT—appears to have activated in the moments before the aircraft plummeted into a nearby hostel for medical students. In all, 260 people died, including all but one of the people onboard the plane. 

[RonT (aka Ombligo)]

Petr at Mentour put out a pilot talk that essentially said if the switches were thrown, it was not an accident. Those switches can not be accidentally bumped or mistakenly moved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQakAafxGck&ab_channel=MentourNow%21

[chopper]

Wow. F****************k.

Can they be turned off for a reason and the pilot could forget to turn them back on? Say they killed the engines, turned them off, then restarted the engines and forgot to switch them back on?

Seems crazy.

[Lemon Drop2]

"The two engines on the Air India flight shut down within one second of each other before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed last month in Ahmedabad, India, killing at least 260 people, according to a preliminary report released Friday.

Both engine fuel control switches that, if pulled while in flight, cut power to the engines, transitioned from the “run” to “cutoff” settings as the plane took off, according to the report.

In the recovered cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off fuel to the engine. The other pilot responded that he didn’t, according to the 15-page report."

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/bo...-released/

Yes, sounds like it could be sabotage. There was so little of the flight to record, and everyone involved is dead. Could be very difficult to solve.

[special]

If this was indeed pilot sabotage, it reminds me of Germanwings Flight 9525

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

[AllGold]

I have no idea how the controls are laid out, but the only thing that comes to mind if it wasn't intentional is he thought he was retracting the landing gear or some similar post-takeoff procedure.

[RonT (aka Ombligo)]

I have no idea how the controls are laid out, but the only thing that comes to mind if it wasn't intentional is he thought he was retracting the landing gear or some similar post-takeoff procedure.

Mentour Pilot went over the ways the switches could be thrown; none of them were accidental. Each switch has to be thrown individually and requires a specific movement. Once the plane reaches V1 (where the pilot is committed to takeoff), their hands are no longer near the throttles or switches. While not jumping to conclusions or speculation, they said it sounded like this was either intentional or the biggest brain fart in aviation.

[Black]

My takeaway was less that the switches are not easy to actuate (they even made the point that there are no guards as there are on some of the other switches) but that a healthy fear is drilled into every properly trained pilot of touching them without a well thought out reason, and coordination with the other pilot at the controls.

---

---

Both engine fuel control switches that, if pulled while in flight, cut power to the engines, transitioned from the “run” to “cutoff” settings as the plane took off, according to the report. That deprived the engines of fuel, preventing the plane from being able to lift off.
Weird to see such a glaring error in this article.

[Lemon Drop2]

"Soon after the switches were turned back to “run” and one engine began regaining thrust, but it wasn’t enough to stop the plane from crashing."

A human cut these switches, one right after the other, and then turned them back on but too late.    The reports rules out any mechanical failure.  The switches can't be "bumped" accidentally. 

May be impossible to know more than this, which will be miserable for all involved.

[Tiganul]

It's time to install "dashcams" in the cockpits to see what the pilots are actually doing.

Yes, I know this is easier said that done. But until recently, most black boxes only stored 2 hours of voice and data. There are many incidents where the plane landed safely after an emergency but the pilots forgot to pull a fuze and the black boxes kept recording once on the ground and overwrote the critical data. I understand that many black boxes are being upgraded to store 24 hours worth of data.

It's time to consider adding video to the voice recorder.