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 ?

Pretty much..

There's a whole industry devoted to keeping the speculation going.

I suspect it's particularly galling to see former colleagues topping their pensions up by providing all sorts of bizzare opinions on TV and radio...

I think most people who have used these switches reckon they have to have been turned off deliberately, either due malice, or quite possibly by mistake, some sort of action slip...we simply have no idea why..

As Notimagain says, the only situation you would move the switches to off then back to run is in the memory items of the Dual Engine Failure checklist. This checklist is, however, designed to be used at much higher altitudes, giving more time for the relight of the engines. We are taught that it can take an uncomfortably long time for the engines to spool back up to a speed where they will be working normally again. The most likely reason for needing to use this checklist would be for engine rundown after inadvertently flying into volcanic ash. However, the most recent high profile dual engine failures have both occurred close to the ground and no time to do this checklist - the Hudson River A320 crash suffered dual engine failure as a result of bird strikes after flying through a flock of Canada geese. The crew were initially criticised for not actioning the Dual Engine Failure checklist, but the captain justified his actions in attempting a ditching (which was, much to everyone’s surprise!) very successful as he thought the chances of getting engines back after such a major birdstrike were unlikely and his efforts better applied to planning a successful emergency landing. The other high profile case was the BA38 Beijing to London, which lost thrust on both engines seconds before landing at Heathrow when water froze in the fuel lines. At this late stage in the flight, there was no chance of running a checklist. I know the captain who was on this flight, and have heard his version of events. We are taught to ‘Aviate, Navigate, Communicate,’ in that order. The absolute first priority every pilot has is to fly the aircraft, before we do anything else. Even before actioning emergency checklists we make sure the aircraft is still flying. In some very sad situations it is not possible to do this though.

Thanks, that's nicely clear summary. I was afraid to look at the report because I would get confused by technical language and trying to line up the timings.

Assuming this was suicide ... more support to make pilots think they have better choices sounds like only solution.

I'd be wary about the latter point ..

It's possible this was a complete catastrophic brain fart (aka action slip) by one of the pilots.

For example one observation that has been raised elsewhere is that the captain was a trainer, would have spent lots of time instructing the sim, and the instructors do have (approved) short cuts that they use in the box to speed sessions up, facilitate quick sim resets, that sort of thing..

Is one possibility that he brought a sim habit or sequence, muscle memory etc to the aircraft that day?

Now i think that's unlikely to say the least but it's slightly more likely than some theories we are hearing.

Dupe post

Yes I was thinking about the taxy run up when obviously the switches would be on.

Last flight I was on 2024, from Dublin again, it was a very long reverse until the taxy runway was reached. So what I'm thinking is that on the moment of taking off, a nervous moment for a co pilot flying, seconds later the switches were turned off. Why this happened is not for speculation at this stage. This would explain how quickly everything happened. Seconds may seem like ages in a disaster but the reality is very much different.

when questioned by the other pilot about why he switched it off he denied doing it, didn’t he?

According to the Indian AAIB there was a very brief conversation during which one of the two pilots denied putting the switches to cutoff.

The report doesn't contain the actual wording of the conversation or identify who said what.

Various possibilities - one of the pilots did it subconsciously somehow, the pilot who was asked this question did it on purpose and denied it, the pilot who asked this question did it on purpose but wanted the voice recording to indicate otherwise.

Least likely possibility given information so far - a fault rather than a pilot action.

It appears that the FO was the one flying the plane and the captain was monitoring. Does that make it more likely to be the captain who turned off the switches, with the FO not noticing initially as he was concentrating on take off?

If it had been the FO who deliberately turned off the switches, surely the captain would have noticed this at the time?

I'm no expert, so I'm interested to hear the opinions of those who are.

In terms of the conversation between the pilots, there are two possibilities. Pilot A is genuinely asking the question of why Pilot B turned the switches off, and Pilot B lies that he didn't. Or Pilot A actually did it but is trying to defect blame to Pilot B.

@Sakura7

It's all assumptions but I'd agree with your thinking about where the FO was looking.

We're told the FO was Pilot Flying (PF)

At lift off the FO would have almost certainly been eyes front, looking out of the windscreen, and also looking in at the Primary Flight (instrument) Display, establishing initial climb.

The cutoff switches would be in his peripheral vision, at best.

And this is important regarding speculation. Obviously something amiss happened in a very short period of time - seconds and a horrific tragedy resulted.

Either could have been distracted. There's no confirmation as to who said what.

We may never know for sure, even if in due course the full conversation is released with voices identified.

With MH370, it could have been either pilot, a couple of factors point to a higher likelihood of it being the pilot not co pilot, but it’s not possible to be certain.

Worth bearing in mind in the context of this bit of the discussion that there are quite prescriptive rules about who does what and when.

For example from before, during and for a few seconds after the "rotate" call you'd expect the pilot flying to have both hands on the yoke (effectively the steering wheel), as well as eyes very much front'ish.

The pilot monitoring tends to be more heads in, hands down, watching for any problems/failures and waiting, for example, to action items such as the "gear up" call.

I think the strangest thing is that they were turned off a second apart

if it was an accidental knock (which is hard enough given the mechanism but let’s say it was possible for some reason) you would expect both to go at the same time

if it was someone turning them off, the second gap would account for turning off one then the other

Yes I think thats what it said. I suppose it would be a bit silly for it to go back to the run through if its designed to shut off the fuel in case of engine fire.

I wondered about the position of the switches. Right next to the throttle, throttle adds power. I suppose in major engine, or just about to crash, emergency you might want to cut off fuel to engine. But having major off switch so easily accessible, accidental press, something knocked onto it…???

You can’t just knock the switch off, it’s a 3-stage process. Even if you inadvertently cut the fuel to one engine, the plane could still climb out on the remaining engine.

That sounds so scary.
Understandable for the nuns as they'd have thought they were crashing.

This sounds like a suicide/mass murder.
To be witness to it knowing there isn't much you can do must have been unfathomable.

Distracted makes it sound accidental, which it's very unlikely to be based on the preliminary report.

Someone turned those switches off.

Either could have been distracted and not noticed the actual incident until it was too late.

We know that the RAT deployed, presumably because it was detected that the engines were failing.

So was this before or after the fuel switches were moved? I did read the report but I don't think the timeline was that clear.

I assume the RAT deploys automatically or can a pilot deploy it?

RAT deploys automatically.

@dynamiccactus

If the 787 RAT follows the standard Boeing set up for their big twins there is a manual deploy option for the pilots to use, plus it will be signalled to deploy automatically for various electrical failures and/or certain hydraulic failures and/or double engine run down.