This implies intent.
> One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
To me this reads like an unintentional error with colossol implications.
Are you suggesting there was malicious intent and then a delibrately crafted denial by the perpetrator?
Pilots are drilled from day one that the fuel switches are sacred. After a few accidents where one engine failed and the pilot accidentally turned off the remaining functional engine, the training was overhauled so that it would be impossible for it to be an easy action done by mistake. One pilot is required to ask the other for confirmation before toggling the switch, I believe. It wouldn’t be something you’d do from muscle memory.
It easy to say that when you know there's likely no way to prove or disprove whether it as an accident or not. Unless a pilot left a note stating his future intentions, there's no way to determine their state of mind.
If there was no mechanical failure, the only remaining possibility is deliberate action. And if it was mechanical failure, we’d see an emergency air worthiness directive being issued, which we haven’t.
Honestly I think the chances are good that you're right, but the way you're presenting it as absolutely certain strikes me as overconfident, borderline arrogant.
Also, what's with the whole "staking your reputation" thing? What reputation? Are you some kind of famous journalist? Is there some reason we should care about you "covering live news" ? Serious questions -- I personally have no idea who you are.
It’s mostly a very public "If I’m wrong, I won’t ever do this again." I’ve been writing informative HN comments since 2008 on various accounts. It’s a big deal to me not to spread misinformation or be mistaken in a situation like this.
The victims also deserve to be acknowledged. At this point the overwhelming body of evidence points to a deliberate act. Pilots are trained never to touch the fuel switches in flight, and (I believe) there is a verbal confirmation required before toggling. This captain had over 8,000 hours.
The reason I’m so confident is because I trust the system. It’s designed so that if either of the two pilots do anything, they verbally call it out, e.g. "gear up." A callout like that followed by fuel switch cutoff would indicate it was accidental. But as far as I know, there was no callout.
The pilot flying is also the one who asks for gear up and such. It’s the job do the pilot monitoring to perform those actions.
Suppose it was accidental. That would mean the pilot flying was fiddling with switches instead of flying; that’s against SOP. Or it would mean the pilot monitoring was performing uncommanded actions, which is also against SOP. It’s not something that happens on a whim. Both are contradictions, hence, no accident.
As for being overconfident or arrogant, what matters to me is accuracy, and passing along that accuracy. No one seemed to be willing to publicly call this a malicious action, so I did. If I’m wrong, you can be sure I’ll feel terrible for weeks, post an apology in the thread that shows I was wrong, and then bow out in disgrace, never to cover news again.
People here did the same thing when the common belief was that there was a non-zero chance of nuclear war. I was one of the few voices in that thread saying absolutely not, stop stressing yourself out for no reason.
I’m simply one voice of many. As always, it’s up to the reader to decide what to believe.
I understand that you appear earnest. However, your history of multi-accounting on this site makes your promise to never post on a given topic again meaningless to me, because I have no expectation that you wouldn’t continue to post about it on other accounts that we don’t know about at this time, possibly because they haven’t even been created yet.