Air India plane crash

Roger Roger said:
One of my old FOs went to your shop on the 76. It’s been a rough enough adjustment for me going from Lear to Guppy flying, often, 3 legs a day and getting better than half of the landings. I can’t imagine how hard it is to get proficient going straight to a wide body and only getting a handful of landings a month.
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Its an adjustment for sure.
 
///AMG said:
I'm probably below average at figuring out what's going on in this hoopty, much less a 787, but I'd think that if the engines both started spooling down on takeoff, my first assumption would not be the fuel levers being cut. I don't know *what* my first assumption would be, but a pilot doing that would be so unfathomable to me, I don't know if it would cross my mind until I had a moment to process and look (at which point I'd actually see them in cutout rather than just assuming). Dunno, maybe that's just me though.

Not being familiar at all with this type (other than the fact that our start levers look the same), is there anything that would feel similar in a similar location that would be part of some normal flow? I know folks have shut HYD 2 off in the guppy when they thought they were turning the engine heaters off. I'm feeling like there is nothing comparable in that location of the cockpit, or during that phase of flight, but I don't know what I don't know.
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Can’t say I haven’t accidentally flipped a HYD switch but I did immediately notice a big yellow HYD light. Unlike another crew that returned to the departure airport lol.
 
MikeD said:
On aircraft much older than you, the T-38 is a good example, they had to be retrofitted with a “throttle gate guard.” Basically the idle to cutoff detent was so worn down on these jets, that it was very easy when going back to idle, to slide past the worn-down detent into the cutoff range. The throttle gate installation was a fold-up mechanism attached to the throttle quadrant, that snapped into place and physically blocked going into cut-off. It was engaged after engine start when both throttles were in idle, and disengaged after pulling into chocks just prior to shutdown (or airborne if needing to make a shutdown for an EP).
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That's an interesting "fix". We had something similar for a totally different reason on the other side of the throttle in the T-45, for CQ cat shots. It was this little hand hold forward of the throttle, and when you ran the power up and they put you in tension (of note, nowadays they put you in tension first before you run the engines up), you put your fingers around that little fold out handle and held it. This was to guard against accidentally pulling the throttle backward as you went down the cat stroke under G/acceleration. I'm not sure why we had it on that plane and no others. No such thing in the F/A-18, and I've never heard of anyone having a problem. Maybe the throttle was just looser in the T-45? Can't remember if there was throttle friction on it or not. Maybe they had this in the A-4/TA-4J too and it was just something that cadre of transition IPs and TPS dudes thought it needed, not sure? Wish I'd thought to ask that of a CA I flew recently who flew A-6's in desert storm during his JO tour, and then went to VT Kingsville and was one of those dudes to introduce the T-45A when it was brand new.
 
///AMG said:
I'd think that if the engines both started spooling down on takeoff, my first assumption would not be the fuel levers being cut.
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That was my first thought as well, to say “why’d you do that” seems to point toward the guy seeing some hand movement out of the ordinary. Engines rolling back I wouldn’t look at the fuel first, I’d go anti ice first (maybe?)
 
Roger Roger said:
3. Switches didn’t actually move, but something caused an electrical signal to make the airplane think they moved.
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I think my earlier statement about absence/presence of a voltage was naive. The switches are a "four pole"design and I suspect this allows for distinct explicit indications of the switch position. Rather than a simple "volts" or "no volts" arrangement, there are likely different electrical states to explicitly and redundantly indicate the switch positions (e.g. open circuit 1 & closed circuit 2 is the RUN position, closed 1 & open 2 is CUTOFF, and other states are invalid, or maybe they do something with DC voltage polarity to explicitly indicate position, and then maybe even with duplicate parallel circuits).
 
MikeD said:
The response to that question was something to the effect of “I didnt”. Which makes me wonder if the question was asked based on what the FO physically saw, or was it asked because that was the first thing suspected since he was flying?

And if it was physically moved by the CA, was it intentional to do that to cut off fuel, or did the CA think he was moving something else (like the Deltal 767/LAX) and that’s why he answered that he didn’t?
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You (well, at least I) didn’t get to many thousands of hours of flying without the occasional “wtf did I do that for?” moments. They are almost always recoverable, maybe something stupid and inconsequential, but they most certainly happen. Same thing in non flying situations, I once slammed a thumb in a a car door jamb. Thinking for a quarter second, when at least a half second was required. On the assumption that the switches were toggled it comes down to was it one of those moments, or was it suicidal. in regards to the 767, wasn’t a plexiglass box installed over the switches to make it harder to just reach over and shut it down? Something to increase that 1/4 second to 1/2 second?
 
Roger Roger said:
Who TF knows… really too early in the process to do anything more than speculate. Kinda seems like 3 possibilities?
1. Accidental (what else would someone have been trying to do down there? All I see in that neighborhood is the stab cutouts)
2. Intentional for reasons unknown
3. Switches didn’t actually move, but something caused an electrical signal to make the airplane think they moved.
Wouldn’t even venture a guess as to what’s likely.
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This is the TL;DR post I was looking for. Thank you.

38 pages of stuff to get to the meat.
 
Itchy said:
. in regards to the 767, wasn’t a plexiglass box installed over the switches to make it harder to just reach over and shut it down? Something to increase that 1/4 second to 1/2 second?
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Not on the freighter version coming from the factory
 
There are so many IG post about this and one seemed interesting. Particularly #8. How on earth would someone in the media be able to get this kind of information? Is it as simple as looking up the tail number?

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SeanD said:
Particularly #8. How on earth would someone in the media be able to get this kind of information? Is it as simple as looking up the tail number?
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In this case, Section 4 of the AAIB preliminary report includes all of this information.
 
BobDDuck said:
A normal thing... sure it will fade into the background at rotation, but something out of the normal pattern? You'll see that in a heartbeat, even if you are fixated on the rotation and liftoff.

I had a captain on the 330 retract my flaps at 200 feet on takeoff once. I saw his hands moving in my peripheral visuon and as soon as I heard the lever click I knew what he'd done. I said the same thing that the Air India FO said ("why did you do that").

Fortunately the flaps move slowly on the 330 and I was able to get the nose down, go TOGO pretty quickly, and the RO was on it, and reached in and put the flaps back to 1 before the flaps moved much (and certainly before the slats moved).

The captain swore I called for flaps zero (which both the RO and I were certain I hadn't done) and blamed me for the whole thing. Although even if I had called for it, he should have checked the speed and said no.

It was a very quiet 10 hour flight home.
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That sounds like a fun trip…
 
Roger Roger said:
One of my old FOs went to your shop on the 76. It’s been a rough enough adjustment for me going from Lear to Guppy flying, often, 3 legs a day and getting better than half of the landings. I can’t imagine how hard it is to get proficient going straight to a wide body and only getting a handful of landings a month.
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As a line holder I was getting 1, maybe 2 a month if things worked out my way. Now that I’m coming back, at least I know I was never good.
 
knot4u said:
Why not? Are suicidal people that want to kill 230 other innocent folks normally deceptive at the very end? This mindset of killing oneself along with a lot of others because they're trying to save face for their family is completely idiotic, especially for a widebody airline pilot in2025.
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I mean, maybe to mask the suicide within a mass murder? Potentially to protect death benefits and such for family? I'm not sure how India's insurance/benefit laws work or how they view suicide so my guess is just that - a wild ass guess at a potential motive.
 
Skåning said:
That was my first thought as well, to say “why’d you do that” seems to point toward the guy seeing some hand movement out of the ordinary. Engines rolling back I wouldn’t look at the fuel first, I’d go anti ice first (maybe?)
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Typical AS pilot move:

Turn on the anti ice when it’s 47C in India… 🤣
 
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