TLDR: The FO was the pilot flying. After gaining hardly 500 feet of altitude, the Captain pulled back the fuel supply switches for both engines, from Run to Cutoff. The CVR transcript is widely available by now. The picture below shows switches in the Cutoff position. It is impossible for these switches to be accidentally toggled, because they require a human with two fingers to grip the switch, pull it up out of the socket, transverse over a detent between the two positions, then drop it back down again. When the FO turned them back on, #1 fired, but took too long to reverse the downspooling fan blades. #2 never reignited. May God have mercy on the 260 murdered souls. -nvp
Air India cockpit recording suggests captain cut fuel to engines before crash, source says
WASHINGTON/SEATTLE, July 17 (Reuters) – A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India flight that crashed last month supports the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines, said a source briefed on U.S. officials’ early assessment of evidence.
The first officer was at the controls of the Boeing 787 and asked the captain why he moved the fuel switches into a position that starved the engines of fuel and requested that he restore the fuel flow, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation.
The U.S. assessment is not contained in a formal document, said the source, who emphasized the cause of the June 12 crash in Ahmedabad, India, that killed 260 people remains under investigation.
There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence from the conversation points to the captain, according to the early assessment.
The Wall Street Journal first reported similar information on Wednesday about the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the investigation into the crash, said in a statement on Thursday that “certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting.” It added the investigation was ongoing and it remained too early to draw definitive conclusions.
The London-bound plane began to lose thrust, and after reaching a height of 650 feet, the jet started to sink. The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to “run”, and the airplane automatically tried restarting the engines, the report said.
But the plane was too low and too slow to be able to recover, aviation safety expert John Nance told Reuters.
The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college campus, the report said, killing 19 people on the ground and 241 of the 242 on board the 787.
Dare we hope that all men be saved???
Flying has become Russian Roulette.
I wouldn’t fly unless it was a matter of life and death. The government is all trying to herd us on to REAL ID, which began under Dubya and is finally being completed under Trump. Flying is one of the first ways they’re using it.
REAL ID most ppl think is just an enhanced driver’s license. Well that’s because the feds asked the states to cooperate in getting REAL ID grandfathered in with driver’s licenses. It is a national ID.
And REAL ID will soon become digitized and married to your bank account. I imagine by that magical 2030 date the US will be cashless and have a social credit system like China. We should expect a massive financial collapse before that time to push this into reality. I’m guessing next year.
Ps. At the moment there are other forms of ID you can use to fly but as Kristi Puppy Killing Noem has said that won’t last.
I fly all the time and I’m not dead yet. Last year I streaked through the sky to Dallas, Mexico, Seattle, Alaska (ok…that was on a boat but it didn’t sink). This year I’ve been to Asheville, Nashville…and next week I fly to Atlanta, Minneapolis, Bozeman, etc all with the handy dandy star ID on my driver’s license and weird passport photo. I can see bufflao roaming the range, tall grasses where deer and elk hide, breathe glorious fresh air of the Bridger Mountains and watch people having fun floating and fishing on the Yellowstone River while sipping wine on my friend’s deck (we went to nursery school together in Old Orlando a million years ago). If I get in the plane and die, so be it. I’ll pray on the way down. So you live your life and be grumpy or whatever and I’ll live mine and be happy even if I die doing it. Make your new life motto: “Stop with all the complaining. Just try to be happy.”
Suicide mission? More like murder.
In other news, Trump is showing AI deep fake videos of Obama being arrested. He also showed an AI picture of himself as the pope, and an AI video of a golden statue of himself in the middle of the “new” Gaza City, cleaned of Palestinians and turned into Atlantic City.
This man is an unhinged psychopath. Lesser of 2 evils.
Ps., if Trump really had the goods on Obama he could’ve just arrested people instead of making a big show of it. He’s doing it to deflect from his Epstein cover up.
In case anyone forgot how Mike got himself banned in the first place…
There’s no way this isn’t deliberate forum disruption.
“Forum disruption”. So Mark clearly posts stuff about Trump. Other posters post off topic stuff. I understand that these posts may be annoying, especially to all you who still think Trump is a good man.
I offer something to be approved. If Mark wants to publish he does, if he doesn’t he doesn’t. I have no power over my so called disruption.
I think having our country being led by a lunatic probable pedophile is newsworthy. I understand I am unlikable but my rationale is that content should outweigh your hatred of me.
Mark is in control, not me. I’m just offering my 2 cents until I get banned again for offering true but hard-to-swallow opinions.
Mike, please put your Trump rants under any one of the previous Trump-related or Trump-adjacent blog entries. Like the post directly below this one.
Back on the Air India topic… Boeing is no doubt sighing in relief. But the fact that they were that worried at all tells us something.
Suicide is the most obvious thought that springs to mind. Though there was a recording where one pilot asked the other whether or not he shut them off, which was denied, and both seemed confused. The pilot could’ve been lying… But in this day and age where shell manufacturing companies are run by intelligence services to distribute bombs hidden in pager devices for years, something highly suspicious in me wouldn’t rule out hidden kill switches in planes activated remotely. I’ve got absolutely no proof of this, and a suicidal person taking 200+ people down with him is certainly not that extraordinary, but I can’t help but wonder…
That model has a voluntary “repair/replace” directive for exactly these switches.
Airline took no corrective action. Red:Blancolirio on Y/T channel and others.
Whew, if it were true, Boink would have lost a lot of money.