https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/11/india/air-india-crash-report-intl-latam
This article has a photo of the switches in question, and goes into more detail about how they work.
Apparently they need to be pulled to change their orientation, I’m wondering if the mechanism simply wore out?
Not likely. These things are checked before every flight.
Dude. It’s Air India.
Never take Air India.
If that does not take away from the fact that these Pilots were very well skilled.
If the company is at fault it’s due to over scheduling since preliminary report indicates no mechanical failures.
It’s not the skills I’m concerned about
Skilled yes, but apparently concealing a mental health issue. This is a huge cultural issue in aviation. Nobody wants to lose their job, so you just bury it.
There’s absolutely no proof that these Pilots were suicidal. I think speculation of such is disrespectful until further evidence shows such things such as in the case of MH 370 which is highly speculated with a lot of evidence to be a pilot suicide.
Pretty sure if you want to off yourself you’d do it differently
There are redundant systems on modern planes that can handle multiple failures. If they’re saying it’s fuel related my guess is dirty jet fuel. It would explain a stuck fuel valve. There’s lots of ground crew checks before flight, and one is checking the fuel tanks for contamination. Just a speculation.
From the article:
The plane’s fuel was tested and found to be of satisfactory quality,
These switches are evidently monitored by the aircraft’s systems, as the investigators seem to know for a fact when these switches were moved. This is not a “failure”, unless the switch moved by itself.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to “I reckon” this, when we know why the engines stopped.
So I know there has to be a reason why these switches are vitally important but doesn’t it seem weird that you can take a catastrophic action like turning the fuel supply off when you’re in mid-takeoff? If you try and put a modern car in reverse at 65 MPH, the car is like “haha no” and ignores you.
You can also just throttle back, which would have the same effect.
Yeah and of course, you can also just ram the thing into the ground. I’d hate to think this was a deliberate act, but it’s certainly possible.
Given the mechanical saftey built into those switches, Unfortunately I guess that leaves us with two reasonable possibilities:
A) One of the pilots was somehow mistaken on the function of those switches and toggled them when they should not have. Then they genuinely thought they hadn’t when asked why they had cutoff fuel.
Or
B) One of the pilots chose to cut off fuel supply to both engines, intentionally bringing down the plane. They then lied to the other pilot when asked why they’d cutoff fuel.
Could have been cut off by one pilot as part of a troubleshooting attempt, maybe? Thinking “it’s not cut off, just a temporary state of affairs” or something like that. Just trying to think of ways this could be a miscommunication instead of blatant misconduct :(
There’s no communication between the two pilots before the switches were moved to cutoff to suggest they encountered any problems prior to fuel cutoff.
Yeah, I didn’t realize how soon after takeoff this was when I proposed that idea either. There’s no way shutting off the fuel during takeoff would be a reasonable decision.
There is no procedure that involves cutting off fuel to both engines while in-flight; one at a time, but not both. Then, there is no procedure that ever involves touching those controls during takeoff. Finally; there would be communication between the pilots discussing any such troubleshooting, they wouldn’t just take it upon themselves to start flipping switches without at the very least letting the other pilot know what they’re doing. Particularly when it comes to troubleshooting; there is a strict set of checklists they go through as a team, with one reading out questions, the other responding with data/answers from the instruments and the first confirming that response.
These were both experienced pilots with ample flight hours; they knew what they were doing at those controls. I’m not going to throw human error out the window entirely, but it’s not looking very likely unfortunately.
Either that plane was brought down intentionally, or there was a stunning error in judgment wildly disregarding procedure in that cockpit that was not communicated at all. (note: the mics record to the blackbox continuously, they’re not ptt, if one of the pilots had said something, it’d be on the tape.)
the planes also arent supposed to automatically dip downwards but here we are
You can’t exactly expect a plane to keep flying when you’ve commanded the engines to stop running/taken away their fuel at such a critical time…
He is blaming Boeing, or more correctly he doesn’t trust Boeing to be 100% innocent.
Sounds like the pilots killed the fuel, and did not mean to do so. Having watched the video, and being totally ignorant of this sort of thing, that makes sense of what I saw.
I’m not trusting any report until I have had heard from Admiral Cloudberg. If you’re not familiar, plane crash investigation is what he does. He’s completely unbiased and seems to be the expert, at least for us layman.
Mentour Pilot did a livestream today, he’s also one of the major commercial aviation YouTubers.
So, so many poorly informed people in here jumping to conclusions, many of which were already ruled out in the preliminary report.
I don’t know any more than what’s in that document myself.
Perhaps some of the armchair aircraft safety investigators in here might want to at least skim the details before coming up with wild theories? Or at least provide reasoning and evidence to support them.
May those who lost their lives, and their loved ones, find peace and closure as best they can once we have all the details. Until then, it would be crass to speculate, especially as non-experts not privvy to the details of the investigation.
When I watched the crash video, I thought that something cut the fuel off. Because that was the most likely reason for all engines to stop.
So, if the pilot or copilot did not do it (I assume it is not just a switch that you can trigger accidentally), what other system has the capability to switch off all fuel lines? Fire suppression systems? Some general “switch off”? And how hard would it be to restart fuel supply? Is it possible to override e.g. such a fire suppression system?
Both the left and right switchs were moved to ‘cutoff’, one pilot recognized this and asked the other pilot why, the other pilot denied doing it, then the switches were returned to ‘run’ and the engines began to re-light (this is all straight from the black box recorder). It was too late to recover though, so the plane went down.
There is a mechanical detent requiring you to pull each switch out, then down. They had to be moved deliberately.
So either this was a suicide, or a coverup for just another Boeing failure.
is it clear that FADEC cannot cut-off via software?
one would think such a fail state should be only accessible after the user has bypassed and confirmed the action.
let’s be honest, do we trust boeing at this point?
If that’s all true: Why do these suicidal fucks take others out with them?
If it’s not true: Does Boeing have another catastrophic pattern failure?
Why? I don’t know. But some really do.
2015 there was the Germanwings flight where one suicidal pilot locked the other one out of the cockpit after he went to the loo and then intentionally crashed the plane in the Alps, killing everyone on board.
Nineteen people died on the ground.
Technically 260 people died on the ground. Because that is where the plane crashed.
However, nineteen people on the ground died.
There is a critical difference in that word order. The former includes everyone who had reached the ground by the time they died, the latter only includes those who were on the ground to begin with, and not those who were on the plane.
Or in other words, the first phrasing highlights destination, the second highlights source. Everyone died on the ground after the plane impacted it, but only 19 were already on the ground when the impact killed them.
The placement of the word “died” is what makes all the difference.
Isn’t English fun?
While I generally support the proper usage of my Nation’s language, as well as making linguistic education available and fun for all, pedantry on the wording surrounding the horrific deaths of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children is uncouth.
There is a time and a place for everything, and this wasn’t it. I’m sorry to be blunt.
Please delete your account
