Air India Crash

esmozz · 18 Jul 2025 at 09:34

Penfold101 said:
You’re probably right - enough time for the rate check, call for the gear and the hand movement though?

I’m clutching at straws still if I’m honest.

I'm thinking instead of pulling the gear lever up his muscle memory somehow goes to the fuel cutoff switches. It's a bit of a stretch though....

Penfold101 · 18 Jul 2025 at 09:41

esmozz said:
I'm thinking instead of pulling the gear lever up his muscle memory somehow goes to the fuel cutoff switches. It's a bit of a stretch though....

Agreed, but then this whole situation is a stretch to get your head around.

I’d still choose this over the intentional action though.

Sankari · 18 Jul 2025 at 13:39

squerble said:
The fuel cutoff switches were moved from RUN to CUTOFF, 3 seconds after liftoff.

Pretty much the only possible explanation is a deliberate action by one of the pilots (probably murder/suicide, but an infinitesimally small chance it was the biggest brain fart of the century).

I know what was done, I am asking for motive. Apparently that's something we still don't know.

esmozz · 18 Jul 2025 at 13:48

Sankari said:
I know what was done, I am asking for motive. Apparently that's something we still don't know.

Incorrect application of procedure from muscle memory/ Some kind of mental incapacitation (stroke)/ Suicide.

Juries out on all three and probably will be for a while.

Edit: Just to add - or some kind of really weird mechanical failure, although that seems unlikely.

mattyfez · 18 Jul 2025 at 14:29

Well both pilots are dead so motive might be guessed in time with more info, but we might never realistically know for sure.

Craig_d1 · 18 Jul 2025 at 14:59

Penfold101 said:
5. Definitely a conversation that will be had - Embraer don’t allow shutoff unless the throttles are at idle, for example. That would be a huge industry wide undertaking and not a quick job I suspect.

that's a great safety feature...you'd really need both pilots to be in cahoots with each other to pull something like switching both engines off like that...as soon as one pilot saw thrust being throttled back alarms bells would ring in the other pilot even before the shut off switches were flicked

danlightbulb · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:09

There was a you tube video last night of a maintenance technician showing these switches in action. Its a piece of cake to pull them out and flick them in one direction or the other. Two fingers, lift and flick. Fraction of a second.

mattyfez · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:17

danlightbulb said:
There was a you tube video last night of a maintenance technician showing these switches in action. Its a piece of cake to pull them out and flick them in one direction or the other. Two fingers, lift and flick. Fraction of a second.

Well that's the key point... They are easy to switch if you need to, but they don't just drop out out of position unless intentionally moved.

mattyfez · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:19

Craig_d1 said:
that's a great safety feature...you'd really need both pilots to be in cahoots with each other to pull something like switching both engines off like that...as soon as one pilot saw thrust being throttled back alarms bells would ring in the other pilot even before the shut off switches were flicked

It wasn't throttled back, the fuel switches were turned off.
The person actually flying wouldn't have been looking at those switches during takeoff, so it provided an opportunity for the other pilot to flip them.

squerble · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:22

mattyfez said:
It wasn't throttled back, the fuel switches were turned off.
The person actually flying wouldn't have been looking at those switches during takeoff, so it provided an opportunity for the other pilot to flip them.

I'm sure craig_d1 was talking about the hypothetical of needing throttles at idle to operate the cutoffs, not what happened on the Air India flight.

danlightbulb · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:22

mattyfez said:
Well that's the key point... They are easy to switch if you need to, but they don't just drop out out of position unless intentionally moved.

Yes, there was some discussion previously about whether these switches could both be flicked within the 1-2 second time recorded on the data recorder by one pilot with one hand. From what I saw on the video - yes easily.

Craig_d1 · 18 Jul 2025 at 15:44

mattyfez said:
It wasn't throttled back, the fuel switches were turned off.
The person actually flying wouldn't have been looking at those switches during takeoff, so it provided an opportunity for the other pilot to flip them.

yup, i know that but from @Penfold101 post he said that on an Embraer built plane, the engine shutoff switches can't be activated unless the planes throttle is in the 'idle' position....so if it was an Embraer plane with throttle on max for take off, you couldn't physically enable engine shutoff literally 4 seconds after takeoff...guessing switches wont work or wont move (not a pilot so no idea how that would build that in to their system) Just seems like a good safety feature to me

Quartz · 18 Jul 2025 at 16:33

squerble said:
The fuel cutoff switches were moved from RUN to CUTOFF, 3 seconds after liftoff.

Pretty much the only possible explanation is a deliberate action by one of the pilots (probably murder/suicide, but an infinitesimally small chance it was the biggest brain fart of the century).

Is it possible that this could have happened through vibration or something else? Has it been confirmed that the switches were in fact moved or did they only register as having been moved, giving the possibility of faulty sensors?

Minstadave · 18 Jul 2025 at 16:39

Quartz said:
Is it possible that this could have happened through vibration or something else? Has it been confirmed that the switches were in fact moved or did they only register as having been moved, giving the possibility of faulty sensors?

Vibration moving both switches at the same time is really, really unlikely, with no other switches being affected making it even less likely.

The switches being physically moved is by far the most likely scenario, either by mistake or purposefully, it's possible we may never know.

Hades · 18 Jul 2025 at 16:56

Quartz said:
Is it possible that this could have happened through vibration or something else? Has it been confirmed that the switches were in fact moved or did they only register as having been moved, giving the possibility of faulty sensors?

No, the switches have to be pulled outwards before they can be moved.

mattyfez · 18 Jul 2025 at 18:01

Quartz said:
Is it possible that this could have happened through vibration or something else? Has it been confirmed that the switches were in fact moved or did they only register as having been moved, giving the possibility of faulty sensors?

No, it's been done to death, the switches cannot be dislodged by themselves...

If you remember on old car gearboxes you had to lift a collar up on the gear stick in order to shift into reverese...it's a bit like that, it can't happen accidentaly.

ubersonic · 18 Jul 2025 at 20:48

Quartz said:
Is it possible that this could have happened through vibration or something else?

Others have already said this is impossible, but just to elaborate.

If the springs that require the switches to be pulled out before they could be moved had failed (on both switches, at the exact same moment) then firstly they would have dropped down and been impossible to put back up without holding them in position (the 787 switches fail into cut-off as oppose to say the 737 switches which fail into run) and there would almost certainly have been indication of that in the CVR. Secondly (and conclusivly) the switches wouldn't have been working and in the RUN position when the wreckage was examined.

The only real questions left are which pilot did it and was it inadvertent or intentional.

ChrisD. · 18 Jul 2025 at 22:13

squerble said:
I'm sure craig_d1 was talking about the hypothetical of needing throttles at idle to operate the cutoffs, not what happened on the Air India flight.

Throttle position is irrelevant to the operation of the switches.

ubersonic · 19 Jul 2025 at 00:05

ChrisD. said:
Throttle position is irrelevant to the operation of the switches.

On a 787 yes but they were talking about the system used on other planes that stops them operating in flight based on throttle position and if it should be mandatory.

SpellowHouse · 19 Jul 2025 at 05:51

Django x2 said:
As an avid aviation enthusiast, some things about this have raised my own questions, as we continue to receive an incredible amount of poor journalism, poor investigation insights (the prelim report raises more questions than answers), and high speculation. Whether there was human error, malicious or otherwise, it does raise questions of Boeing, particularly in the DM era, of their systems.

Things that I find unclear:
1. The switches are mechanical, but send electrical signals to FADEC. These switches are available for pilots to engage with for many reasons, safety and emergency. It's proposed that they were physically moved, but is it not possible that an short, or some other system failure led the FDR to believe they'd been moved from RUN to CUTOFF.

I've seen comments in here saying the 787 fuel switches are mechanical, which is only true in operation, like your light switch in your house. The rest is electrical signal sent to FADEC which is software. Another analogy to be considered is 5 people go into a data centre and one of the most important business critical servers shuts down. Who did it? Physical switch, software controlled.

Based on this, we can never know with 100pc certainty, which pilot pulled the switches, if at all. Just because FO was rotating, doesn't mean he couldn't have also changed the fuel switches. "Both hands full" remarks are speculation at best.

2. If the fuel switches were physically moved, why would the RAT deploy? There must have been another system responsible for realising sustained flight was not possible for the RAT to deploy. Simply moving the switches from RUN to CUTOFF would not deploy the RAT.

3. Focus is on the captain. However, if I was planning on bringing down a jet, knowing full well it was being monitored by FDR/CVR I would be clever enough to make an ambiguous comment such as "why did you turn off" knowing full well, it would throw someone else into the spotlight.

4. In relation to point 1, why where thrust levers set to idle despite FDR showing take off thrust? Seems like some possible system discrepancy cannot be ruled out.

5. Seems to me that FADEC should be gateposted in a more efficient way, ie, "hey, dummy, we're in the rotation and climb phase, are you really really really sure you want to starve both engines of fuel?" (For instance, bird strike, engine failure)

Boeing, under the DM era, have history of covering up findings, cost cutting and lack of compliance with regulation, I sincerely hope they aren't doing that here, because if another 787 comes down in a similar fashion, and they've been pushing the human error narrative, they're going to have a lot of explaining to do.

I know nothing, but I don't see any harm in speculation as long as no one picks up a brick with the intent of throwing it at someone. This flight, the speculation has been informative and very interesting to follow.

I believe it is possible to control the fuel pumps via the computer systems.

No, we can never know.

"both hands full", well, we just said we can never know, but it does seem reasonable that the guy looking after the switches moved the switches.

The RAT automatically deploys if the plane is off the ground and the switches are moved to cutoff.

We don't know who said those words, so they don't really point to anyone or any thing.

I don't know about the levers, but they just flipped the fuel switches away from cutoff. Could that be why the levers were moved? As part of the process of getting the engines restarted?

There are legit reasons why they might be turned off in emergencies. Engine fire, etc.

Like I said, I know nothing, but there do seem to be reasons for all this stuff.