Re: OT: air india crash

He was, according to The Times, unmarried.

Ah. Definitely gay then :-)

We know that the signal to cutoff the fuel was issued, but not whether the switch was moved. There could have been an electrical/software problem.

Interesting that the report makes no mention of something that was already announced: the mention of "lack of thrust" at the time of the mayday.

We know that the signal to resume the fuel was issued, but not whether the switch was moved. There could have been an electrical/software problem.

Sorry for playing devil's advocate about the switch and an electrical/software problem, but it *is* a (remote?) possibility.

I desperately hope that the cause isn't the elephant-in-the-room one... I hope every other possible cause is eliminated before that one is considered.

Bloody big cockpit on these Dreamliners if you can get two blokes and elephant in it.

Could it be an electrical open circuit or a short circuit in the fuel cut off switch thus the engines shutting down even though the fuel cut off switch never changed position?

And could that have been an intermitten S/C or O?C as the engined were then gaining thrust or relighting/restarting?

Nobody said it had to be a real elephant.

Is the cockpit big enough for an elephant?

It would be bad design but the 2 switches could have one common return line, plus 2 functional lines . Then a break from corrossion/vibration /temperature-flexing, breaking contact in an interconnector somewhere of that one line , could be registered ,falsely, as manual movement of both switches.

Yep, normally used to decide when the reversers etc can be deployed when landing

Yep

But correct in this case

Yep, no one with a clue would do that

Yeah, that's not going to happen with an insect in it

You are wrong about that too, because that doesnt work when the plane bounces with a heavy landing

There have in fact been quite a few situations where cockpit video would have been very useful when deciding what had actually happened

It isnt just for this particular situation

But far too far apart for any insect to get caught in both at the same time

Or even for a stowaway cat to do that and switch them both given the safety protectiojn

Impossible, actually

It has now been claimed that the captain was well known for mental problems by his colleagues which certainly explains why the preliminary report didnt name the pilot who asked the other one why he had turned the fuel switches off

I don't know much about railways, but over on the railways NG they were terribly keen on HS2. The argument was that the North-South rail network was at capacity, and what we needed was a whole new line. Maybe that's right. I certainly don't know.

The real problem is that the whole project was made top-notch right from the start. For example, the trains are longer than normal trains, so they can't even fit into normal stations.

Nope, that's too dangerous when close to the ground given how long it takes to restart the engines

Those switches can't be remotely switched

Yes

Not usually unless its impossible to determine what happened because the FDR and CVR are not available or no one knows where the remains of the plane are like with MH370 etc

The cutoff switches are not used for that that only cuts the fuel off to the engines, not all fuel flow from the fuel tanks

Even if you turn out to be correct, I think it's wrong to say that.

We'll get the full report in due course. In the meantime, is it fair to sully the captain's reputation and call him a mass murderer? He isn't able to defend himself, and there could be repercussions for his family.

Even if one of the two pilots switched off the fuel (which is not by any means certain) it seems unfair to conclude he did it deliberately. It really was possibly an awful mistake.

Particularly if it was the pilot flying deliberately suiciding, he wouldnt be caring about keeping the wings level. in spades with climbing at the right rate when suiciding

No

Yep

Unrounded

Yep

That doesnt happen on a 787

Yep

Nope, particularly with the russians and koreans etc

Not always particularly with russia etc

Problem in this case is that there are lots of native languages in India and even pilots dont all speak Hindi

Not clear how common that is in India

I'm not it does indicate that someone turned the switches to cutoff and they were returned to run after that, not necessarily by the same person

Not necessarily if you are pilot flying with a very much more senior pilot monitoring who may have had a good reason to do that

But you would have expected that to be included if it was present

You don't normally get interim reports unless the wreck etc and FDR and CVR are not available or the data from them is not available

Not usually

It actually records changes with something like switch position