Preliminary report into Air India crash released

it makes sense to me that the pilot who said "I did not do it" actually did do it without realizing it, was supposed to be putting the landing gear up when he committed a muscle memory mistake. it happened around the time the landing gear should be up, and this explanation matches what was said in the cockpit, and the fact that the landing gear wasn't retracted. I think this idea was even floated initially by the youtube pilot/analysts I watch but dismissed as unlikely.

even though that raising the gear is a up motion and fuelcut off is a down motion?

And fuel cutoff is _two_ down motions? That's the death knell for this theory, imo.

that makes it less likely, not impossible, we're trying to match against the data we have. I think distracted muscle memory is more likely than suicide and sounding innocent while lying about it

There is no possible way to confuse these two actions. There's a reason a wheel is attached to the gear lever.

i have several passwords i type all the time. sometimes i get them confused and type the wrong one to the wrong prompt. i type them by muscle memory, but i also think about them while typing and i think thoughts like "time to reach up and to the left on the keyboard for this password". I couldn't tell you the letter i'm trying to type, i just know to do that.

not all my passwords are up and to the left, some are down and to the right, but when i type the wrong one into the wrong place, i type it accurately, i'm just not supposed to be typing it.

"time to do that thing i've practiced, reach to the left". shuts two engines off by muscle memory.

One of the nice things about finally having the preliminary report is I get to stop hearing all of the same assumptions/theories/YouTuber said/"a guy I know got a leaked report"/etc in water cooler talk at work because the preliminary report solidly disproved all of them so far. If anyone even had and stuck with an idea matching this report it wouldn't have stood out in the conversations anyways.

The collection of comments on this post remind me it'll just be a brand new set of random guesses until the final report is released. Or worse - the final report reaches no further conclusions and it just has to fade out of interest naturally over time.

Would anyone be surprised if an accomplished concert pianist played C Bb Bb instead of C E in a piece they had played thousands of times correctly?

The only difference here is that the consequences are death instead of mere head shaking.

Murder needs more proof than just performing the wrong action. Until then we should apply Hanlon's Razor.

Sometimes people put cleaning liquid in the fridge.

Given a long enough span of time, every possible fuck up eventually will happen.

The landing gear lever is rather prominently featured in the 787 in a panel central to the cockpit layout so that either pilot can easily reach it. For decades and across many manufacturers, the landing gear lever has traditionally featured a knob that deliberately resembles an airplane wheel. It's very hard to mistake it for anything else. It's actuated by simply moving it up or down.

The fuel control switches are behind the throttle stalks above the handles to release the engine fire suppression agents. These switches are markedly smaller and have guards on each side protecting them from accidental manipulation. You need to reach behind and twirl your fingers around a bit to reach them. Actuating these switches requires pulling the knob up sufficiently to clear a stop lock before then rotating down. There are two switches that were activated in sequence and in short order.

The pilot monitoring is responsible for raising the gear in response to the pilot flyings' instruction.

I would find it very difficult to believe this was a muscle memory mistake. At the very least, I would want to more evidence supporting such a proposition.

This idea strikes me as even more unlikely than someone shifting their moving vehicle into reverse while intending to activate the window wipers.

> There is no possible way to confuse these two actions.

This is obviously an overstatement. Any two regularly performed actions can be confused. Sometimes (when tired or distracted) I've walked into my bathroom intending to shave, but mistakenly brushed my teeth and left. My toothbrush and razor are not similar in function or placement.

Sometimes I drive all the way home without being aware of what I did in between.

If you shut off the engines a couple of dozen meters above ground shouldn’t every alarm be blaring or there should be some sort of additional lever you have to pull way out of the way to enable shutting off the engine that close to the ground.

Probably time to design a plane that can't be sent into terrain in seconds by flipping a switch.

"Sent into terrain in seconds by flipping a switch" is both too inaccurate and feels too cursory to take as impetus for serious design criticism, especially when the extensive preliminary report explicitly does not recommend any design changes with the current information.

Now try to design a plane that also lets you rapidly shutoff fuel to both engines in case of fire.

I don't think the theory is that the muscle memory sequences resemble each other.

Instead, it's that because muscle memory allows you to do things without thinking about it, you can get mixed up about which action you meant to perform and go through the whole process without realizing it.

I want you to guess how many traffic accidents are caused by accidentally reversing when you intended to go forward.

Test your mental model against the real world. This is your opportunity.

If someone confused their steering wheel for the brake you'd probably be surprised - there are indeed errors that are essentially impossible for a competent person to make by mistake. No idea about the plane controls, though.

> This idea strikes me as even more unlikely than someone shifting their moving vehicle into reverse while intending to activate the window wipers.

I suspect you've never driven an older vehicle with the shifter on the steering column.

Is actuating the fuel cutoff switches something that is done routinely in these aircraft, to the extent it could reasonably become muscle memory?

ETA: downthread it is mentioned that these switches are used on the ground to cut the engines

Consider a case where the engine starts to violently vibrate. This can tear the structure apart. Delaying shutting off the engine can be catastrophic.

It's very hard to solve one problem without creating another. At some point, you just gotta trust the pilot.

My editor is MicroEmacs, which I've been using since the 1980s. I no longer remember what the commands are, but my fingers do.

I remember once writing a cheat sheet for the commands by looking at what my fingers were doing.

Even humans have fixed action patterns. Much behavior is barely under conscious control.

Seems akin to something like a parking brake. Something you only use at a stop, or rarely during an emergency.

Would it matter in this case since you would crash either ways. I’m talking about protection in a very specific situation where you make it harder to shut off both engines when you’re very close to the ground.

If I were to apply OPs assertion to your actions it’s like brushing your teeth with razor. I guess that’s what they meant.

> I suspect you've never driven an older vehicle with the shifter on the steering column.

Or a new Mercedes ;)

Was amused to see they have one of those too, with "parking brake" written on it.

It's human nature to want to guess at possible explanations for things that are unusual and unexpected.

If hearing those guesses annoys you, nobody is forcing you to read through comments on a thread of people making them! (I hope - sorry if you are being forced after all.)

Not really, though. They're both (retracting the gear, and cutting off fuel) just toggle switches, as far as your brain's conscious mechanisms go. Doing them both on every flight dulls the part of your brain that cares about how they feel different to perform.

(I'm not strongly arguing against the murder scenario, just against the idea that it's impossible for it to be the confusion scenario.)

If the ground you are over is a good landing spot, your best chance is to cut off the fuel to that engine ASAP.

Is there a video feed of the cockpit inside the black box?

If not there should be one as even my simple home wifi camera can record hours of hd video on the small sd card. And If there is, wouldn't that help to instantly identify such things?

Even in modern "fly by wire" cars the steering wheel and brake pedal have an immediate effect. They are essentially directly connect to their respective control mechanisms. As far as I understand both of the plane controls on question just trigger sequences that are carried out automatically. So it's more like firing off the wrong backup script than scratching the wrong armpit.

Those are caused by operating the same lever in a slightly different manner. Not comparable to two completely differently designed levers placed far apart.

Same goes for accidental acceleration instead of braking. Two of the same kind of lever right next to each other.

Accidental acceleration while intending to turn on the wipers would be a fitting example, I don't think that happens though.

That's just your brain associating the bathroom with the act of brushing your teeth, and therefore doing it automatically upon the trigger of entering the bathroom. It bears no resemblance to the accidental activation of a completely different button.

The other poster's correction: "it’s like brushing your teeth with razor" is apt. Touching the fuel cutoff switches is not part of any procedure remotely relevant to the takeoff, so there's no trigger present that would prompt the automatic behavior.

Because there's no difference in actions needed to do so. A similar mistake is throwing away a useful item while holding onto a piece of trash. The action is the same, it's just the item in question that's different.

This is not what happened here at all. The actions needed to activate the fuel cutoff switches are not similar to any other action a pilot would want to make during takeoff.

And a gun that doesn't let you point it at your face. And a knife that doesn't let you cut yourself. And a car that doesn't let you accelerate into a static object. And...

That's a ridiculous analogy. The pilots aren't sitting in front of a uniform set of keys that they need to press in a specific order with a specific timing.

The mistake equivalent to what the pilot supposedly did would be if the pianist accidentally stuck a finger up his nose instead of playing the notes or something.

> "time to do that thing i've practiced, reach to the left". shuts two engines off by muscle memory.

If that were true, pilots would perform arbitrary motions all the time. Same with car drivers.

Typing something on a keyboard, especially when it's always in the same context, is always essentially the same physical action. The context of a password prompt is the same, the letters on the keyboard feel the same and are right next to each other.

Not comparable to pressing two very different buttons placed far apart, in a context when you'd never ever reach for them.

Now I'm trying to remember if I've ever picked up my razor and accidentally begun tooth brushing motions with it. Probably!

More relevantly, you seem to me to be unduly confident about what this pilot's associative triggers might and might not be.

Neither is a toggle switch and the gear lever is incredibly conspicuous:

https://www.aerosimsolutions.com.au/custom-products/olympus-...

This would be like opening your car door when you meant to activate the turn signal.

If you read through the boeing procedures, if an engine fails just after take off you delay cutting throttle or hitting the cutoff until you have positive climb and pass a certain altitude. Specifically because a mistake here would be so incredibly catastrophic. The following number of steps and verbal cross checks for then shutting down the engine are quite daunting. Not something applicable here, but still interesting to learn about

No neither black box stores video. One stores audio on flash memory and the other stores flight details, sensors etc.

I don’t think video is a bad idea. I assume there is a reason why it wasn’t done. Data wise black boxes actually store very little data (maybe a 100mbs), I don’t know if that is due to how old they are, or the requirements of withstanding extremes.

On an Airbus yes, engines won't stop if the thrust lever isn't on "idle".

Not so much on a Boeing.

They're pilots, they do hundreds of stops each year. In case of domestic pilots, even thousands. And with years of experience, switching off fuel control switches is basically muscle memory at this time now.

> it makes sense to me that..

This is exactly how the investigations are NOT conducted. You don't find the evidence that confirms your theory and call it a day when the pieces sorta fit together. You look solely at the evidence and listen to what they tell you leaving aside what you think could have happened.

But if he did, would have done hours of retraining in a simulator?

I agree. Has anyone here unplugged their mouse instead of pressing caps lock by mistake?

Driving isn't trained to anywhere near the same standard.

Probably more training required to bake a cake than drive a car (hours wise).

If we had your typical driver fly a plane we'd be doomed to a lot of crashes.

Good analogy. Things I do every day in front of the mirror, but I occasionally attempt to squeeze some soap on my toothbrush. Or I have to brush my teeth and I find my beard foamed up. Or I walk out of the shower after only rinsing myself with water.

How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory

What about up on the overhead panel where the other engine start controls are?

Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle

Also the fire suppression system is a different activation (covered pull handles I think)

this bathroom thing and various similar scenarios happens to me when im on weed.

Not sure why something so important isn't included.

Heck they can make a back up directly to the cloud in addition to black box considering I'm able to watch YouTube in some flights nowadays.

Landing gear controls are nothing like the fuel shutoffs. And they are in completely different locations. Landing gear controls are in front of the throttle, fuel shutoffs are aft of the throttles.

This is such a funny comment. Of course you have no clue why it is funny. But that makes it all the more funny. Eventually you'll figure it out though.

Genuinely curious - could heavy marijuana use cause confusion between landing gear and fuel cutoff? Or some other drugs? (Wondering if they screen pilots for alcohol before they board an aircraft.)

Is that "nothing like" though? You are saying they are in different places, ok, but are they similar in other ways? Are both controls the same shape? size? colour? texture?

This isn’t true. This was a 787. It does not use a separate recorder for voice and data (CVR, FDR).

(Most media outlets also got this wrong and were slow to make corrections. )

Rather, it uses a EAFR (Enhanced airborne flight recorder) which basically combines the functions. They’re also more advanced than older systems and can record for longer. The 787 has two of them - the forward one has its own power supply too.

There should be video as well, but I’m not sure what was recovered. Not necessarily part of the flight data recording, but there are other video systems.

https://www.geaerospace.com/sites/default/files/enhanced-air...

It depends on how that person internalized and learned the behaviour. We store things differently.

Respectfully, it's not up to other people to disprove your toy theory. The question you're asking here can very easily be answered with a quick Google search.

The short answer is that they are _very_ different controls, that looks and operate in a completely different way, located in a different place, and it's completely unrealistic to think a pilot could have mistaken one for the other.

The other day I was eating dinner while chatting with my partner. I finished eating and needed to pee and throw away the fast food container. I walked straight to the bathroom, raised the toilet lid and threw the fast food container right into the toilet.

Weird mistakes can happen.

My partner got a good laugh out of it

You’re just overlaying your mental model.

Think of the action as a stored function. Maybe they’ve always recalled the function as part of a certain list. It can be a case where the lists get confused rather than the modality of input (lever etc)