Air India and pilot murder-suicides
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The preliminary report regarding last month’s Air India crash revealed that both engines failed immediately after takeoff because the fuel cutoff switches for each were thrown practically simultaneously as the plane went airborne:
A preliminary report depicted confusion in the cockpit shortly before an Air India jetliner crashed and killed 260 people last month, after the plane’s engine fuel cutoff switches flipped almost simultaneously and starved the engines of fuel.
The Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab 787 Dreamliner bound for London from the Indian city of Ahmedabad began to lose thrust and sink shortly after takeoff, according to the report on the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade released on Saturday by Indian accident investigators.
The “confusion in the cockpit” frame from this Reuters story is based on the fact that one pilot immediately asked the other why he had cut off the fuel, and the other responded that he hadn’t.
This video explains in fascinating detail why it’s basically impossible that this could have happened accidentally, so that leaves one explanation for how it happened:
Among other things, the pilot in the video explains that engine failure at takeoff is a scenario for which pilots train constantly, and there’s a very elaborate procedure for such emergencies that in no case involves cutting off fuel to even one engine for at least 30 or 40 seconds, and then only after various dual confirmations between the pilots.
It’s striking that commercial airliner crashes have become extraordinarily rare, and that the very few that have happened anywhere in the world in recent years seem in at least three or four cases now to have involved some sort of murder-suicide on the part of a pilot.
If you’re a nervous flier, the video is actually quite reassuring, as it details the extraordinarily comprehensive training these people undergo pretty much constantly. But it may be that more attention needs to be paid to other factors regarding pilots and commercial airliner safety.