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 ?

As others have said, he could have lied because he knew there was a black box recording the conversation. Presumably his family were not with him, so he could have lied to protect them, or just lied to stop the other guy from trying to switch them back. Entirely speculation. We'll never know.

or just lied to stop the other guy from trying to switch them back (on)

They'd be going back into "run" regardless of what was said...

As for we will never know..don't forget we've only had the interim report....there's a long way to go with the investigation, some very clever work has been done over the years with analysis of all the clicks and clacks that get picked up.by the microphones on the flight deck as switches get moved.

The full report will contain a lot more info, including a full transcript of what is on the voice recorder

NDTV reporting on the Pilot’s medical condition:

www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/667141-preliminary-air-india-crash-report-published-18.html

Oh maybe just to save face or didn't want to admit what he'd done. Odd reasoning when youre in the middle of a murder/suicide.

Remember there was also the video where a passenger was on this same airplane.

He was on the flight before the flight that crashed. Same airplane.

He posted a video showing that none of the electronics on his seat worked. The tv screen didnt work. The air conditioner also didnt work.

Air India is absolutely shit as a passenger experience. Nothing works on the seats, especially not in economy. That is not unusual. Its more or less all of their planes. They are very dated. But they have safely flown thousands of flights a day.

I see pprune has pulled the plug on debate again..quite rightly...
.
However I saw the NDTV video and the medical condition comment in it is a bit ?

Plenty of pilots, especially older ones, carry on flying commercially with minor medical conditions and/or restrictions on their licence..eg. "As or with co-pilot"..."corrective lenses available' ..."corrective lenses to be worn".....nothing automatically sinister about it.

Well god rest their souls. It was a tragedy.

I know that European flights have a good safety record, but I have felt so much more scared on flights since the air india flight.

When i am in the air, I keep thinking of what could go wrong and how far we could fall

Has anyone else been like this?

To be honest, I feel bad, but I'm relieved if its pilot error as I have to'for my sins' go on an AI flight (again) this year for a family wedding. I am taking my DC and was thinking of pulling out and taking a hit on the cost but I know realistically that its an extremely rare occurrence and we are more likely to die in a car crash etc. Swapping to another airline would add hours to our flight and involve a stopover. They are shit though! Apparently before this they were in the middle of a plane upgrade. Hopefully it has made them check all their planes properly for faults. They do do a lovely chicken curry though. That's about it on the positives of flying AI. Convenience, chicken curry, even before this!

I don’t like flying but I do it a fair bit for work and just think of all the people who actually do it for a job like the pilots and crew and that normally makes me feel better!

they also didn’t have a lot of time to fix the issue. I read the report and saw they managed to get one engine restarted and powered but not the other but they had so little time to fix it - plenty of articles have published the timeline and it’s so incredibly short to identify the problem, fix it and save the plane and they just didn’t have the height. Horrendous.

Yes that was a bit odd. Then he kept going on about pilot having marriage breakups and how tough it is, which I have also heard tbf.

they said on the news this morning that there's been problems with these switches before. Odd, as pps have said, you have to deliberately pull them before lifting.

The man giving his professional opinion was unequivocal as to this being a deliberate act though. Occam’s razor does not seemingly favour safety manuals or double glitches or pilots bags brushing by. Hopefully time really will tell for the families & we’ll get a definitive report.

I think this is another aspect of the report the media have got their teeth into without explaining the full context and are perhaps getting out of proportion though if course we don't know yet.

Even if you're minded to think it was a errant switch problem it's hard to explain how that on it's own would cause both switches to go to cutoff at almost, but not quite, the same instant.

Due technology problems I'm struggling to find a user friendly link to the original Indian AAIB interim report, because I think it might help if posters could see that document, rather than the MSMs version of it.

Absolutely horrendous incident. I'm terrified of flying but continue to fly for the family.

I recall in the immediate aftermath that the sole survivor reported hearing a loud bang 30 seconds after take off. I'm guessing this was incidental then...

I heard about this on last night's news and concluded as follows.

Scenario 1
The swithes slipped or were knocked
But given the way the switches are said to work, that's rather unlikely

Scenario 2 -
Pilot A turned the switch off with nefarious intentions and was called out on that by Pilot B

Scenario 3
Pilot A turned the switch off himself unnoticed by Pilot B, then accused Pilot B of doing what he himself had just done. This seems like an odd thought, I know, but if Pilot A knows the plane's going down, he'll know that the black box will be scrutinised and that the voices will be identifiable to those who know them, such as colleagues, and the report will identify which pilot seems to have turned the swtich off and they probably don't want their famililes facing the backlash of being associated with the pilot who deliberately brought the plane down.

So terrorism seems rather likely.

But I'm sure more details will come in due course.

I think it is far too early to say on a piece of clickbait posted by some second rate hack.

I’ve read the bang could have been the ram air turbine (a propeller-powered emergency generator) dropping down and slamming into position.

I’ve read the news reports and watched the Mentour vid done last night after the interim report was released and sadly agree with your scenario 3. Maybe scenario 2 but with the delay in the switches being put back on, I’m speculating but leaning towards scenario 3.
Really really tragic and I guess they will now be focusing a lot on the pilot’s backgrounds to include in the final report.

^^There's been a bit of an argument about when the RAT deployed but that's a very strong possibility.

Could have been turned on again by the other pilot. Could have been turned on again by the potentially suicidal pilot, knowing it was too late anyway.

We’ll have to await the final report to know exactly what did happen.

I wasnt questioning him. I didnt even read his posts before posting.

Interesting then that you took the trouble to [quote] his posts. (which you hadn't read apparently) ???

I am only repeating what I heard from many other Pilots and Flight Engineers who were speculating it was deliberate - not saying anyone is wrong!

How do you know it’s a he?

Joining the thread, I have nothing to add, but appreciate all the thoughts on here .

my next two holidays are by train, thankfully! And then after that I’m planning an interrail!