Air India crash fuel switches turned off

[limetrees32]

I've not found a thread on this , although it's taken me so long to search out the knowledgeable posters
on the Washington crash that there probably is one now.
But @notimagain what do you think ?

RTFT @Kellyklara

Don't thank her because she is completely incorrect in what she wrote.

It's not all about you.

I didn't even read your posts before I posted.

So her assertion that i was "questioning the opinion of an experienced pilot", is complete bullshit

I posted my own post on the matter, which I am entitled to do

From what @notimagain said there are two steps - pull out and then flick up - I guess a bit like putting a car in reverse when you pull the knob up first.

sounds like 99 times out of 100 it’s used to stop a fire and no one would want that process delayed.

Do you know, @notimagain, how many accidental knocks there had been, and under what circumstances (ie ever on take off??) that led to the switches moving from Run to Off, that resulted in the modification recommendation from Boeing?

(Hope that makes sense - I’m on my phone which seems to cause rapid onset incoherence issues.)

Yep, it's a slight but deliberate lift, out of the detent, then down for cut off.

They are switches that your hands don't really go anywhere near in flight, and if you do need to move them whilst airborne, say for an engine fire, or one of the engine failure drills, it's done as a very cautious act and you get a crosscheck/confirmation before moving from the other pilot.

Oh wow @notimagain I didn’t know you were a pilot, I always just think of you as my friend from the Trump threads! 🤩

I heard it as why did you 'turn off the fuel' (but there is a technical word he used which I don't remember). And the other one replied I didn't. Implying neither of them did it.

Another similar type plane had a recall because of faulty fuel switches, the same ones used on this plane too and they hadn't been checked. I wouldn't be blaming the pilots just yet.

Never heard of any on the 777 or 787 but guessing something precipitated the.mod.

Heard of it happening once on a 747 (a manual got dropped), but I don't recall that having gated switches (and you had four engines anyway..🤔).

I didn’t phrase that well.
just that switching the fuel switches is a deliberate act and that the pilots are heard to say - why have you done that? I didn’t do it. Paraphrasing.
so I was shocked at this
the switches were turned back on but too late to recover

Hr already did last night. I was watching him and another pilot, at 11.30pm live.

Both pilots are quite happy to fly in the mode of plane in question.

Calm down 🙄🙄

I am just watching their latest update and both are being as careful as possible in describing the facts, but also saying there may be more than one explanation. IMO Petter is very measured in what he says and his attention to detail is impressive. Just as I would hope and expect from an airline pilot. I haven't watched Ben before, but I am finding him very good as well.
Such an awful tragedy and this waiting for answers must be absolutely horrendous for all the bereaved waiting to find out why their loved ones died.

I thought when I heard it that just after you have made a deliberate decision to kill 250 people including yourself is a bit of an odd time to lie about not doing it (I would have thought they would have either been silent or praying or something) but it makes more sense if, as a previous poster said, the one who did the deliberate act has asked the other one why they have switched the fuel off, knowing that there would be a Black box recording and the other one has genuinely said 'I didn't' then tried to switch it back on again.

So just to clarify (sorry, I'm stupid!) is the switch able to be accidentally knocked out of position?

Is it the sort of switch you could move without thinking - you know how you move through the gears when driving without giving it much conscious thought?

Or do both pilot's actions have to be corroborated by each other?

This has been answered.

Apparently there was a ten second delay and a fourteen second delay for the switches to be turned back on. After it being noted they were off. This seems very long.

Yes, and the other one who said “I didn’t” in response could have been lying. Or something so far inexplicable (seems unlikely but we don’t know all the facts yet) has happened.

This shows what the switches look like, with some commentary

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx20p2x9093t

Take off and landing always have had a heightened risk of pilot errors. Fatigue, poor training all contribute. This remind me of the Libya air crash at Tripoli airport about 15 years ago, 1 survivor which was a 10 year old Dutch boy.

The only authorative version of events is in the Indian AAIB interim report and it does not say quite that with respect to actions and timings

All it says is basically the two fuel control switches went to cut off just after lift off...about ten seconds later they went back on, and at some point within those ten seconds there was a brief discussion.....so we don't know how long it took for the fuel control switch positions to be noticed.

I'd kind of speculate that for the first handful of those seconds there will have been a ???..first symptoms on the flight deck might have been generator warnings plus a sensation of loss of thrust, flight path decaying, engine parameters beginning to wind down, maybe plus audio alerts.

I'd speculate, again, that the obvious place for the pilots to check initially would be systems like fuel pump switches and other switches on the overhead panel...I'm not sure anyone analysing this rationally would be looking downwards at first at the fuel cutoff switches because there would be no rational reason to think they would have been moved..

...then there's the,.to.paraphrase "who did that", then they get moved back to run...

All takes time...

Worth bearing in mind it took Sullenberger about ten seconds to call for any major actions in the Hudson accident, and he knew he'd hit birds.

Maybe read my first sentence again

Thank you 🙏

They just look like ordinary buttons, easy to flick from that picture but that cant be right. Do they have to be pulled up and moved or something?

But didn’t the other pilot then say he hadn’t switched the switches.

Yes.