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Re: Air India 787 recent crash. Report, Barrons article
It only says that engine fuel switches suddenly and simultaneously "transitioned" to CUTOFF, & then were "transitioned" to RUN. As these switches require deliberate actions to move due to a locking mechanism, it's a mystery how the CUTOFF happened in the first place. There is some audio that both pilots were surprised by the sudden CUTOFF.
After they were moved back to RUN, engine auto-restart cycles were initiated. One engine regained power but the other engine couldn't get restarted. By then, the flight crashed.
On another forum, a pilot with over 30 years experience flying Boeing aircraft stated that it is impossible to knock the fuel switches into the cutoff position inadvertently.
Yes, I've reviewed numerous reports from varied sources on this, and the consensus is that it's not possible to place the fuel switches into the cutoff position inadvertently.
The recovered cockpit audio indicates that one of the two pilots asked the other if he had operated those two switches, and that the other pilot denied having done so. At this point It's certainly seeming as if one of those two pilots deliberately crashed that airplane.
I’ve seen Boeing aircraft boxes from cockpit with similar switches and they are difficult to move - you have to pull out switch with force in order to move up or down. These Honeywell switches are military grade and cost about $1,500. I’ve seen boxes with bent switches and the only way that happens is if you drop the box on tarmac as you are carrying it out of plane.
There is clearly more information than has been released by India AAIB (US NTSB, UK AAIB, Boeing and GE are also participating).
1. There is almost 26 minutes of cockpit audio (even video?) from the time the flight left the gate and it crashed. Only a short paraphrasing/translation of their talk has been released (without identifying the people talking, Copilot/flying/PF or Captain/assisting/observing/PIC/PM),
"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."
Even if they weren't talking in English, people can make sense of their conversation whether in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi or Marathi. Their names are available from media reports - both were based in Mumbai; Captain (Sumeet Sabharwal) was close to retiring, copilot (Clive Kunder) had lot of flying experience but none yet as PIC of this type of aircraft.
2. No information about the state of instruments or engine or fuel before the fuel CUTOFF. Was there an emergency situation building up that could trigger auto-CUTOFF? If this isn't possible, then pilots should be blamed regardless of what they were heard saying.
From what I have read, an emergency fuel CUTOFF could happen via software if there was a fuel leak or some other emergency situation that may not have been apparent to the pilots. To just state that fuel switches "transitioned" almost simultaneously (within 1 second) to CUTOFF 3 seconds after the liftoff, and then sequentially "transitioned" to "RUN" 10 & 14 seconds later, is mystifying. Mayday call was a few seconds later.
3. The ATC in India is also overloaded. But its amazing that there was no immediate pickup or response from ATC to Mayday 3x, and by the time ATC tried to get back to AI 171, everyone (including the ATC) could see that the flight had already crashed.
Comments
https://aaib.gov.in/What's New Assets/Preliminary Report VT-ANB.pdf
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3e6e572bb0cd57e7/8d66090a-full.pdf
It only says that engine fuel switches suddenly and simultaneously "transitioned" to CUTOFF, & then were "transitioned" to RUN. As these switches require deliberate actions to move due to a locking mechanism, it's a mystery how the CUTOFF happened in the first place. There is some audio that both pilots were surprised by the sudden CUTOFF.
After they were moved back to RUN, engine auto-restart cycles were initiated. One engine regained power but the other engine couldn't get restarted. By then, the flight crashed.
stated that it is impossible to knock the fuel switches into the cutoff position inadvertently.
The recovered cockpit audio indicates that one of the two pilots asked the other if he had operated those two switches, and that the other pilot denied having done so. At this point It's certainly seeming as if one of those two pilots deliberately crashed that airplane.
OMHG. Another Malaysia Air-like instance????
The main chart is down on the page, and I suggest that you click on the "Flight Type" column to group the commercial aircraft types together.
1. There is almost 26 minutes of cockpit audio (even video?) from the time the flight left the gate and it crashed. Only a short paraphrasing/translation of their talk has been released (without identifying the people talking, Copilot/flying/PF or Captain/assisting/observing/PIC/PM),
"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."
Even if they weren't talking in English, people can make sense of their conversation whether in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi or Marathi. Their names are available from media reports - both were based in Mumbai; Captain (Sumeet Sabharwal) was close to retiring, copilot (Clive Kunder) had lot of flying experience but none yet as PIC of this type of aircraft.
2. No information about the state of instruments or engine or fuel before the fuel CUTOFF. Was there an emergency situation building up that could trigger auto-CUTOFF? If this isn't possible, then pilots should be blamed regardless of what they were heard saying.
From what I have read, an emergency fuel CUTOFF could happen via software if there was a fuel leak or some other emergency situation that may not have been apparent to the pilots. To just state that fuel switches "transitioned" almost simultaneously (within 1 second) to CUTOFF 3 seconds after the liftoff, and then sequentially "transitioned" to "RUN" 10 & 14 seconds later, is mystifying. Mayday call was a few seconds later.
3. The ATC in India is also overloaded. But its amazing that there was no immediate pickup or response from ATC to Mayday 3x, and by the time ATC tried to get back to AI 171, everyone (including the ATC) could see that the flight had already crashed.
Anyway, there are lot of questions.