Here’s a piece from the British press (gift link). It looks likely that conspiracy theories will gain traction, especially if Air India don’t want their pilots to be blamed. Hopefully it doesn’t get as crazy as MH-370.
Air India victim families bewildered by crash report
There are no good options here - whether it’s a mechanical issue (unlikely) or pilot action, it’s going to leave passengers feeling uneasy.
There’s been a bunch of attention paid to a 2018 Boeing advisory, but the switches have been changed twice since then and no issues have been reported on 787s anyway.
WSJ reporting the senior captain turned off the fuel control switches.
Gift Link:
From the article:
But to show why accidental shutoff of both switches is implausible, here’s a video snippet showing what’s required to actually move these switches:
The Air India crash investigators deserve commendation for their transparency in attributing pilot error, a refreshing contrast to how such errors have been handled in other recent investigations.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-truth-about-the-air-india-crash-error-flight-plane-investigation-c689ab9f?st=mJMHJu&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Not wanting to overlook the Air India crash and relatively transparent (and still interim) report, but wanted to comment on this statement (from the article you linked), which is the first time I’ve heard this:
The notorious disappearance of MH370 in 2014? No conclusion from the Malaysian government in a report that left out evidence that the pilot had practiced on his home computer departing from the flight plan in nearly identical fashion, exhausting his fuel and crashing into the sea.
That’s the first time I’ve heard of this, too. And my husband has been following the MH370 story closely.
Same. I felt like I’ve read every single story about that over the last 11 years. It’s crazy it’s been 11 years.
That was a very informative video, which covered far more than just the fuel cutoff switches. Thanks for sharing.
I have to admit though, that seeing actual clips of that fatal flight was disturbing.
Yes, indeed. The video mentioned above also makes this point in its final minute.
I do recall reading about this years ago and wondered why it wasn’t investigated further. To the best of my recollection though, I only remember reading that the captain had flown the route on his simulator, not that he had simulated fuel exhaustion and a crash.
This was widely reported in 2016. But by then there had been so many crazy stories about secret flights to Kazakhstan etc, that I think this just faded into the background (I was indirectly involved in the search back then).
It wasn’t just the Malaysians, the Australian investigators also concealed this information, presumably to avoid annoying the Malaysian government that had been funding the search, before it eventually leaked out:
Page about the controversy and speculation based on what was mentioned and not mentioned in the preliminary report:
