Preliminary report into Air India crash released

I just want to call out that, whatever the facts of this case, pilot heroism is way more common than pilot murder. This is off the top of my head, so don't quote me on the precise details, I'm probably misremembering some things. But a few of my favorite examples:

- British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out. The head flight attendant holds onto his legs to keep him in the plane. The copilot and flight attendant think he is dead, but they keep the situation under control and land the plane.

Everyone survives - including the pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwHWNFdOvg

- United 232: An engine explodes in the tail of an MD-10. Due to rotten luck and weaknesses in the design, it takes out all three of the redundant hydraulic systems, rendering the control surfaces inoperable.

There's a pilot onboard as a passenger who, it just so happens, has read about similar incidents in other aircraft and trained for this scenario on his own initiative. He joins the other pilots in the cockpit and they figure out how to use the engines to establish rudimentary control.

They crash just short of the runway. 112 people die, but 184 people survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT7CgWvD-x4

- Pinnacle 3701: Two pilots mess around with an empty plane. They take it up to it's operational ceiling. While they're goofing off, they don't realize they're losing momentum. They try to correct too late and cannot land safely.

In their last moments they decide to sacrifice any chance they have to survive by not deploying their landing gear. They choose to glide for the maximum distance to avoid hitting houses, rather than maximizing how much impact is absorbed. They do hit a house but no one else is killed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMmCekKO_c

> British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out.

This one is a good illustration of how better design can help prevent accidents or make them less severe.

The error the maintenance people made was that when they replaced the window and the 90 screws that hold it on 84 of the screws they used were were 0.66 mm smaller in diameter than they should have been.

The window on that model plane was fitted from the outside, so the job of the screws was to hold it there against the force of the pressure difference at altitude. The smaller screws were too weak to do that.

If instead the designers of the plane had used plug type windows which are fitted from the inside then the pressure difference at altitude works to hold the window in place. Even with no screws it would be fine at altitude. Instead the job of the screws would be to keep gravity from making the window fall in when the plane is not high enough for the pressure difference to keep it in place.

My vague memory of the Air Emergency episode on this (AKA Air Crash Investigation, Air Disasters, Mayday, and maybe others depending on what country and channel you are watching it on) is that after this accident many aircraft companies switched to mostly using plug windows on new designs.

> the pressure difference at altitude works to hold the window in place

Curious, is the pressure difference actually greater than the force of 800km/h wind pushing on the window? Or is it just for side windows?