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Preliminary report into Air India crash released

(www.bbc.co.uk)
294 points cjr | 5 comments | 11 Jul 25 20:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.424s | source
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decimalenough ◴[11 Jul 25 21:24 UTC] No.44536914[source]▶
> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.

So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally, they need to be unlocked first by pulling them out.

> In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.

And both pilots deny doing it.

It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.

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1. __turbobrew__ ◴[11 Jul 25 22:46 UTC] No.44537554[source]▶
I wonder if the switches are still in tact after the crash? Can they verify that the switches are mechanically sound? If so, seems highly likely it was intentional.
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2. pigbearpig ◴[11 Jul 25 22:55 UTC] No.44537612[source]▶
There are pictures of them in the report.
3. ◴[11 Jul 25 22:57 UTC] No.44537633[source]▶
4. userbinator ◴[12 Jul 25 09:19 UTC] No.44540580[source]▶
I'd suspect the wiring leading from the switches to the engine controllers first, especially since it looked like both circuits cut out nearly at the same time.
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5. shash ◴[12 Jul 25 11:53 UTC] No.44541417[source]▶
This is speculation again since I don't really know, but my understanding of aviation engineering is that there would be two separate controllers for each engine connected to these two switches. At no point would they be connected to the _same_ control unit. The really short time (~1s) between the two being cutoff is the difficult thing to explain here.