Air India Chief Says Preliminary Crash Report Raises Fresh Questions 42
Air India's chief executive urged staff to avoid drawing premature conclusions about what caused one of the airline's Boeing triangle jets to crash last month, after a preliminary investigation ruled out mechanical or maintenance issues, turning attention to the pilots' actions. WSJ: Campbell Wilson told staff that the probe into the crash was "far from over," according to an internal memo, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, in which he set out some of the findings of a report issued by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau at the end of last week.
Wilson's memo didn't mention one of the AAIB's findings: that the airplane's fuel-control switches had been turned off one by one, seconds after takeoff, starving both engines of fuel. The switches, which sit between the two seats in the cockpit, were turned back on about 10 seconds later, but the engines apparently couldn't fully restart and gain thrust fast enough, the report said.
The crash of the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner killed all but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board, as well as 19 people on the ground, when the plane slammed into a residential area beyond the airport in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. In the memo, Wilson said "over the past 30 days, we've seen an ongoing cycle of theories, allegations, rumours and sensational headlines, many of which have later been disproven."
Wilson's memo didn't mention one of the AAIB's findings: that the airplane's fuel-control switches had been turned off one by one, seconds after takeoff, starving both engines of fuel. The switches, which sit between the two seats in the cockpit, were turned back on about 10 seconds later, but the engines apparently couldn't fully restart and gain thrust fast enough, the report said.
The crash of the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner killed all but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board, as well as 19 people on the ground, when the plane slammed into a residential area beyond the airport in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. In the memo, Wilson said "over the past 30 days, we've seen an ongoing cycle of theories, allegations, rumours and sensational headlines, many of which have later been disproven."
Nothing new (Score:2)
I don't see anything new, compared with the previous story about this crash.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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Nationalists might actually prefer if it was a Jihadist or if they can somehow swing the proof of that.
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At the moment the audio + actions suggest it was suicide.
It's possible. In some cases, a suicidal act is an impulse. Which the subject regrets moments later (based in interviewing survivors of bridge jumping, etc).
It's also possible that this was an "Oh shit!" moment. The non-flying pilot "blocks" the throttles (thrust levers) during taxi to hold them in takeoff position (forward) with his hand. Once the plane rotates (nose wheel off the ground), that pilot removes his hand. The act of pulling a hand back could* put it in contact with the fuel switches. Which, l
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Whether or not there was a failure of the locking mechanism (which there probably wasn't), it wasn't an accidental shut-off.
Not implying suicide. Frankly who the fuck knows what happened in there. But it was "intentional".
There is new stuff, just not on Slashdot (Score:2)
There actually was some new information published since the last time the story was featured on Slashdot. Not surprised at the vacuous Slashdot reaction, however. Perhaps more significant that I don't feel like the quality of discussion on Slashdot these days merits the effort to dig up the link.
So as a memory exercise, I'll just summarize what I can recall. It was an article written by someone closely linked to the airline involved. Retired executive? Possibly also a former pilot? Quite familiar with norma
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If there was something new, the new shit should have been in the summary. I didn't see any new shit. If there was, what was it?
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Only if you don't rule out your own islamaphobia.
Usually if a jihadist is in the middle of an act of terrorism on behalf of their beliefs, they aren't shy about letting people know it, or at the very least giving some kind of indication that they know they're going to die in the process and preparing for that in the moment.
There are absolutely zero indications of that, and absolutely nobody has claimed any kind of credit for this. And if it was a jihadist pilot, don't you think they'd also try to take some
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What's your opinion on Jews?
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I’m ok with them. Israel is another matter.
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It's exactly the same as every other subset of humanity you can name. They deserve to exist in peace without being pointed at because of being part of that subset.
Yes, this is how I feel about Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Agnostics, Atheists, or any other religion. And if more people felt that way, the world would be a far better place.
Fuck your stereotypes, and fuck you for trying to paint people with some kind of bigot-brush searching for a gotcha moment.
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Wait. You think I have Islamophobia? If so, how did you possibly arrive at that conclusion?
Note: I don't have Islamophobia. Why would I? No Muslim has ever done shit to me. He'll, a good friend of mine is a Muslim. I have a Quran on my bookshelf. No bible though.
Remember the 737 Max (Score:2)
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Well ultimately it still was the pilots fault as the pilot wasn't aware which system was malfunctioning, how the system worked, and didn't take appropriate action to correct for the problem. That is the reason why the FAA required recertification of all pilot training programs for each individual airline before allowing that airline to resume flying their 737 MAX 8s. See Appendix A https://www.faa.gov/documentLi... [faa.gov]
Yeah the hardware was fucking rubbish, but there ultimately still was an element of pilot erro
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Yes, it's the pilots fault for not having ESP training to know Boeing was corrupt, greedy and putting out faulty products and lying about retraining for profit. Inset eyeroll emoji.
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Boeing specifically sold the MAX as not requiring training for the MCAS- both in advertising, and regulatory requirements.
A pilot that was not required to be trained due to corruption of the regulatory regime has not made an error, short of being able to divine truth from corporate chicken bones.
Triangle jet? (Score:1)
Granularity (Score:2)
A question: What is the the granularity of those times given? I get the impression that it is one second, but there is quite a difference between
08:08:42.999 Engine 1 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
08:08:43.000 Engine 2 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
and
08:08:42.000 Engine 1 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
08:08:43.999 Engine 2 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
One of those is essentially "simultaneously" and the other pretty much two se
Re: Granularity (Score:1)
It does not tell us they were not flipped with one hand at the same time, no.
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[SNIP]
08:08:42.999 Engine 1 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
08:08:43.000 Engine 2 fuel switch flips to CUTOFF
[SNIP]
. . . is essentially "simultaneously" . . .
[SNIP]
And if the accuracy was +-1/1000sec OR +-100/sec (not uncommon for a log)?
Re:Granularity (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually it doesn't. That's the problem with granularity, you're chasing the difference between state (which is never defined at a single point for a switch) and scan time of the input system. If one switch is triggered within 1ms from the other, they have been triggered simultaneously, with any resulting error being the result of contact bounce. For a system that has a scan time of 1 second, it could very well have been that one switch had contacts which hadn't settled one side of the second mark while the other had to wait for the system to process its input logic again 1 second later. That's the OP's point. I don't think it makes any difference to the outcome or investigation, but it is important in some situations.
I have a real world example of this which I have experienced. On a Triconex industrial safety system there is a single switch that sets the system to OFF, RUN, REMOTE, and PROGRAM mode. It spends most of it's time in RUN, but I had to download some new code to it so I went to the system and flicked this switch to RUN. Unluckily as I flicked this single switch 2 of the system's 3 main processors saw one contact close 125ms after the 3rd processor, that was enough to trigger a diagnostic error and force the processor to reboot raising all hell in the control room as system fault alarms were coming up. One switch only, two different states in the same system.
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10ths of a second means significantly more data to be recorded, especially for continuously measured values. But really what is the outcome difference you're looking for? If this were a purely software error then the timing wouldn't be 1 second off (or even 1ms off). 1 second granularity is enough to tell us they changed state mechanically, whether by hand or otherwise. What additional info are you postulating to see here?
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Are these values "continuously measured" or is the logging event driven?
As to what the difference between simultaneous and two seconds, the "simultaneous" end of the scale is a clear indication that the switch locking mechanism was broken.
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Rather, the preliminary report says:
immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec.
The granularity for the switches might be bad, but the engine core speed is 0.125 seconds, so they should be able to infer if there was a meaningful gap between the deactivations.
A 2018 advisory was issued for those switches (Score:4, Informative)
See https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob... [europa.eu] That's an old advisory (December 2018) that applies across a variety of Boeing aircraft. It should have been the case that all operators did and documented the required inspections.
Model 717-200 airplanes; Model 737-700, -700C, -800, and -900ER
series airplanes; Model 737-8 and -9 airplanes; Model 747-400, -400D, -400F, -8, and -8F series
airplanes; Model 757-200, -200CB, -200PF, and -300 series airplanes; Model 767-200, -300, -
300F, -400ER, and -2C series airplanes; Model 787-8, -9, and -10 airplanes; Model MD-11 and
MD-11F airplanes; and Model MD-90-30 airplanes of the potential for disengagement of the fuel
control switch locking feature.
1) Inspect the locking feature of the fuel control switch to ensure its engagement. While the
airplane is on the ground, check whether the fuel control switch can be moved between the
two positions without lifting up the switch. If the switch can be moved without lifting it up,
the locking feature has been disengaged and the switch should be replaced at the earliest
opportunity.
2) For Boeing Model 737-700, -700C, -800, and -900ER series airplanes and Boeing Model 737-
8 and -9 airplanes delivered with a fuel control switch having P/N 766AT613-3D: Replace the
fuel control switch with a switch having P/N 766AT614-3D, which includes an improved
locking feature.
It's my understanding that part of the cockpit was recovered pretty much intact, so I'm sure there'll be forensic investigation into those switches.
Re:A 2018 advisory was issued for those switches (Score:4, Informative)
The 787 switch is slightly different from the 737 switches and there have been no known cases of them being tripped accidentally on a 787.
Additionally, the control stand on that specific 787 was supposedly replaced a couple of times over its life so it likely would have received updated switches already.
Plus defective switches would not explain why one switch was slipped and then the other.
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So the inspection recommended by the 2018 advisory you
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When I was in Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego we called the constant landing and taking off planes freedom birds.
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I can't speak to this particular airport... but, for most of them, I suspect you'd find those areas were mostly open space when the airport was first designed and built.
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Luke AFB, nominally located in Glendale, AZ, was built long before housing was built as close to it as ii is today. Mostly farms back then. In time, of course, development ensured, and now many residents complain bitterly about jet noise. They never were told, nor realized, that they bought their house next to an active Air Force base that was there decades ago, in 1941.
Until 2019 it was in Surprise, AZ city ordinance that realtors or sales agents needed to have on their person a map of the Luke AFB locale,
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We'll inform Chicago to stop using every runway at O'Hare then, because you say so. Though, it may be a bit of a discussion since they have so many aircraft land and take off without crashing on a daily basis. But you said they shouldn't do that any more, so we'll just stop a few billion dollars a day of commerce!
Very unlikely to be a problem with the switches (Score:2)
Seems strange to allow user input (Score:2)
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Fire? From my perspecitve (non-technical, non-aeornautical) you should not want something like this to be locked down. You should always allow for something unexpected to occur which would necessitate moving these switches in all circumstances. Locking them down would seem to deprive the pilot/co-pilot the ability to react to a situation.
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"Boeing triangle jet" (Score:2)