Dream liner down in India on air port

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AerialTorpedoDude69 said:
I believe you, but Mary Schiavo said
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First things first - Mary Schiavo was:
  • A political appointee (one of the Bushes from memory) as an administrator,
  • A lawyer, not an administrator
  • Had absolutely no previous history with the FAA (she was a political appointee - not a seasoned FAA *veteran)
Secondly Mary Schiavo has:
  • absolutely no engineering or other training relative to the content of this investigation
  • absolutely zero air accident/investigation training or experience
  • is getting her information from people who are equally unqualified and almost certainly have a political agenda
Thirdly Mary Schiavo:
  • was one of the better FAA administrators and is responsible for following New Zealand's lead in taking action against bogus parts
  • did not do much, if anything, to remedy the desperate shortage of air traffic control staff that has continued since Ronald Reagan's day - a deficiency which makes her and most other FAA administrators since guilty of causing the mid air at Washington, and all the many near mid air collisions that are now making the news far too often.
*placing people with no experience in charge government departments and agencies, especially of an agency as critical to air safety as the FAA is, is seldom done outside the USA and poor third world countries. Most countries promote seasoned veterans of those departments or agencies to be the head because they bring years of knowledge and experience to the position.

Placing a lawyer in charge of aviation makes as much sense as placing a baggage handler in charge of the FBI. The lack of relevant knowledge is no different.
 
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Yet, according to CVR they were switched off and back on.

When the switch is turned off a signal is interrupted. This is shown in the cockpit and the CVR will register that. When its turned on the signal is active, light goes out, and shown on the CVR.

I'm unfamiliar with the 787, but thats how similar switches on every aircraft I've flown, crewed, or worked on function.

I'm pretty certain if the switches had not been manually activated, the airline would be saying so. Why? It's actually in their best interest. It shifts the blame from the airline and its pilots to Boeing.

Yet, they aren't doing that. Its a pretty damning indication of what happened.
 
Your interpretation is solid and founded on good reasoning, but it is still an interpretation of the available data. I've read through the report and it doesn't say whether it was manual or electronic activation (link to report). Correct me if I'm wrong. As far as I can, investigators are still reading through the black box's data, which apparently is kept secret to protect proprietary data. I understand that the outputs from the controllers are complex and that there's a considerable amount of data to parse through, but you'd think they'd provide more info by now.


Thumpalumpacus interestingly, the report oddly omitted a time index for when the FO asks the pilot why he turned off the fuel. I think you are onto something.

If the FO's comment was made immediately following activation of the fuel cutoff system, then we'd know for certain that the pilot shut it off. But because the report obscures when the recording was made, we have no idea what tipped the FO off. There's no reason for this to have been left out of the preliminary report because everything else is time indexed. As you say, it doesn't smell right.

MiTasol that's correct. All investigator generals are bureaucrats. Bureaucrat are usually lawyers. Schiavo's background was in air crash litigation.

For you to say that she's unqualified is to say that almost no one who has ever held an inspector general role has been qualified. Schiavo has been reading reports from engineers and other qualified experts, and then creating litigation cases based on those reports, for decades.
 

Prelim reports never give the full information.

However…

Using logic if it was clearly not manual activation of the switches, they never would have said it was. Think about it…
 
Agree. It all seems very deliberate. The full CVR release would be very telling I think.
 
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
Agreed, they should release the full transcript. I suspect that is deliberate though.
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This being a prelim report, I don't expect a full transcript. I'd want to chase those leads down and get ahead of the media BS well beforehand, and won't release them before I've run down things in them, if I were in charge.

So yeah, I agree, it was deliberate. I just think there's a solid reason behind it. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
 
An Ercoupe crashed in Tenn last week, with fatal results for the pilot. The NTSB has pointed out that the fuel cut off valve for the engine was found to be partially closed and there is speculation that might have been cause for engine losing power. But in reality, if the valve had been even partially closed before takeoff the airplane would have not been able to take off and climb to the altitude where the engine lost power. And if you are going down to an off-airport landing it is standard practice to close the valve in order to reduce the chance of post-crash fire.

So is it normal to turn off the fuel switches in the airliner if you know you are going down?
 

But then why would one pilot ask the other why they turned it off?

On an unrelated but similar topic…

On the Cherokees I fly, the fuel tank selector switch is on the left side next to the pilots leg. If you're not careful you can accidentally shut it off when trying to switch between left and right tank. Accidents have occurred because of that.
 
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Lawyers are people who will twist any fact to suit their clients needs -- or, as often, -- or more often, their bank accounts needs.

Read my earlier post #166 on the Mt Erebus crash and how far that lawyer twisted the facts to suit his clients, and his, agenda.

Mary Schiavo's agenda includes maintaining her high profile as a lawyer and destroying faith in the FAA because that increases her chances of winning her cases.

EDIT - you will note that she has been quiet on the DC mid-air. Maybe because she does not want questions asked about how few ATC staff she caused to be trained.

EDIT 2 - Bureaucrats are often lawyers in the USA. In most other countries bureaucrats started in other positions in the organisation before getting legal and/or economics training.
 
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I'd also note that Air India pilots unions (ALPA and the Indian Commercial Pilots Union) have gone very quiet on the crash. They made a brief, and forceful, defence of their pilots about 2 weeks ago when details of the initial report started to leak. Since then though, it's been radio silence and the Indian pilot community has noticed and is a bit pissed about it.
 
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
On the Cherokees I fly, the fuel tank selector switch is on the left side next to the pilots leg. If your not careful you can accidentally shut it off when trying to switch between left and right tank. Accidents have occurred because of that.
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On my Ercoupe there is a valve on the Right side, down by the floor, that shuts off the flow from the wing tanks to the fuel pump. Presumably, this was to enable you to deal with a leak in that line. But one time a guy who I was giving a ride somehow managed to shut off that valve while getting in. It was a shock to see the nose tank cork going down. I later found out that valve is supposed to be safety wired in the ON position to prevent such accidental switching, although safety wired with thin brass wire rather than steel wire so to enable it to be closed.

Also it has been reported that the pilots must have been heavily fatigued given their flying scheduled.
 

The highest court in India has strongly criticised the country's aviation authorities for their handling of the aftermath of the Air India plane crash that killed 261 people in June.

Leaving only one survivor, the flight bound for Gatwick airport from Ahmedabad crashed shortly after taking off, killing 242 passengers on board and 19 others on the ground.

The court said it was "irresponsible" for the aviation authority to suggest, through leaks to the media, that pilot error had caused the disaster.

It called on Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for the government's response before it rules on a case filed by activists demanding an independent investigation.
The court said the way the aviation body released its preliminary report in to the Boeing Dreamliner's crash was "selective and piecemeal".

The preliminary report, published by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) in July, said fuel supply to the engines was cut off just seconds after take-off.
The report also said one of the pilots was heard asking the other "why did he cut off" in a cockpit voice recording, with another pilot responding that he did not do so.

Air India crash aftermath handled 'irresponsibly', says court

Judges say India's aviation body was irresponsible to suggest through leaks to the media that pilot error had caused the disaster.
www.bbc.com
 
(Warning: Discussion and signs of depression and PTSD.)

Viswashkumar Ramesh has done some of his first interviews since the crash. As a reminder, he is the sole survivor:

View: https://youtu.be/EO3hZNHEcSY?si=NLB0j5EWrEyD4yEmHe is suffering from sever PTSD and likely depression as well. He says the loss of his brother ruined everything for him. This was a hard watch, so again I advise to use caution if you want to watch it.
 
Horrific. I hope he gets adequate medical treatment in the UK because it sounds like his doctors are not up on the latest research.

The least understood injuries from traumatic accidents are to the brain. The tell-tale sign that the survivor suffered a TBI are his facial bruising and lacerations. He should have been monitored for sleep apnea.

Unfortunately, an older protocol for treating survivors of accidents is benzodiazepines because of their ability to cause memory loss and their sedating properties. However, these drugs are actually associated with a much higher risk of PTSD because they interfere with the brain's natural trauma response.

EDIT: PSA here... Sleep apnea causes PTSD and depression, particularly in the context of trauma. And brain traumas cause sleep apnea.
 
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MiTasol did you hear about the RAT malfunctions?

Air India says RAT deployment on aircraft not caused by system fault or pilot error

RAT Deployment: The aircraft landed safely, and the airline has submitted its report to the DGCA. However, pilots are urging a fleet-wide audit following this and another recent technical issue.
infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com

The October 4th deployment was attributed to a technical glitch, although there is now some debate on that point as well.
 
No, I was not aware that Air India and others have had a small number of uncommanded RAT deployments. It would suggest that there is a combination of electrical loads that the logic circuits consider require the RAT to deploy. If so it will be a pig to diagnose and correct as pinning down the load combination that sets off the command will be difficult.

I must admit I prefer an uncommanded deployment to a deployment failure as the latter would put the aircraft and passengers at risk.
 
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