Air India Crash

Disco_P said:
I'm now leaning on one of the pilots having a brain fart and shutting down the engines. Probably the Captain with 18,000 hours, so used to flying that he no longer has to think every action fully through. He thought "gear up" believes he did "gear up" but due to a brain fart, his arm did "engine shutdown"

As I believe that the pilots in the cockpit should always have absolute authority to be able to fly to the plane how they want, without the risk of "computer says no" I don't think there is a fix, just an acceptable risk.
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I thought it was all going to be AI and push a button to take off.. (If you can imagine the BOFH AI Grok4 doing that)
 
Disco_P said:
As I believe that the pilots in the cockpit should always have absolute authority to be able to fly to the plane how they want, without the risk of "computer says no" I don't think there is a fix, just an acceptable risk.
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Wouldn't be unreasonable to have a "you really, really sure you want to turn both engines off 100ft in the air?" prompt though.
 
Disco_P said:
As I believe that the pilots in the cockpit should always have absolute authority to be able to fly to the plane how they want, without the risk of "computer says no" I don't think there is a fix, just an acceptable risk.
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Given pilot error is a leading cause of aviation incidents the acceptable risk would be letting the software decide.
 
200sols said:
Given pilot error is a leading cause of aviation incidents the acceptable risk would be letting the software decide.
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And when finally pilots are automated out of the flight deck the leading cause of aviation accidents will be the computer software that flies the plane.
 
200sols said:
But overall you'd have fewer accidents.
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There are already incredibly few accidents per hours flown in aviation already. As is often quoted - it's one of the safest forms of transport there is.

Accident rates in aviation have been generally failing for decades. And I'm there's no evidence either way that removing pilots from the flight deck would improve safety because there is simply no data.

I don't doubt it will happen but it's decades away anyway. And it will happen not for safety reasons but for cost.
 
esmozz said:
And when finally pilots are automated out of the flight deck the leading cause of aviation accidents will be the computer software that flies the plane.
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Like the utter failure of autonomous driving as part of every day life, there is a balance between human control and computer assistance - the Asians 214 crash was a prime example of the pilots not understanding the aircraft systems well enough.
 
Penfold101 said:
Given we don’t have fully computer controlled airliners operating today, you cannot possibly know that.
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I know what the facts tell me today, its not the software that's causing most accidents, its human errors. Be that pilots or others like maintenance crews.

I guess it's sore point for pilots but it'll happen eventually, probably in a few decades.
 
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Penfold101 said:
Like the utter failure of autonomous driving as part of every day life, there is a balance between human control and computer assistance - the Asians 214 crash was a prime example of the pilots not understanding the aircraft systems well enough.
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Absolutely, but the particular example you quote is also due to a punitive culture whereby pilots were terrified of doing anything non standard due to fear of be punished for even minor deviations from procedures.

Safety in aviation is as much about culture (company or otherwise) as it is about technology.
 
200sols said:
I know what the facts tell me today, its not the software that's causing most accidents, its human errors. Be that pilots or others like maintenance crews.

I guess it's sore point for pilots but it'll happen eventually, probably in a few decades.
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Today’s software is not doing the aircraft equivalent of Full Self Driving - it’s simply not comparable and thus you can’t say if it would be safer or not.

You only have to look at the raft of Tesla FSD related accidents to know that it’s not a simple solution to the human condition.
 
Purgatory said:
airlive.net

We now know which of the pilots probably moved the fuel switches to the 'cutoff' position according to WSJ

The First Officer of Air India AI171 asked why fuel switches were not on 'RUN' according to the Wall Street Journal.
airlive.net airlive.net
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This is jumping to a conclusion. Just because one of the pilots did not move the switches does not mean that the other pilot did; unless I've missed news, a mechanical failure has yet to be ruled out. Indeed, they could be trying to divert blame.
 
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