India->London aircrash sees one survivor walk away!

[butters]

seated close to the escape door, the survivor has no idea how he survived when everyone else died, let alone walked from the crash.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...p&cvid=e420b7c10c8e4390870f6345e66e41c0&ei=10

 

[Politruk]

Satanic bargain, of course.

 

[nowisthetime]

I know he is suffering from survivor's guilt! Wow!

 

[butters]

Satanic bargain, of course.

someone, somewhere, is busy planning a film

 

[Lazaran]

seated close to the escape door, the survivor has no idea how he survived when everyone else died, let alone walked from the crash.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...p&cvid=e420b7c10c8e4390870f6345e66e41c0&ei=10

“Unbreakable”.

 

[AnomalyLady]

Praying for all of the families afflicted by such a tragedy.

 

[Politruk]

someone, somewhere, is busy planning a film

Bollywood musical!

 

[ChloeTzang]

Somebody turned the fuel off......

 

[ChloeTzang]

 

[HisArpy]

View attachment 2553012

This doesn't look good for the airline.

OTOH, it's possible for the ECU's to have failed and closed the valves without the mechanical switches physically being moved. The 01 second time frame suggests that possibility. The voice recording of the 2nd pilot saying he hadn't shut off the fuel would support that possibility.

We will not know until the final report.

 

[Whynotyeahwhynot]

Something strange there. I mean even if the pilot who was on the stick and busy with the take off, he would have noticed the other fiddling with the switches. The console is right there in the middle between both of them. Maybe some sort of freak electronic failure.

 

[Bray123]

It doesn't look good for the manufacturer of the plane, Boeing.

It should be impossible (not merely difficult) to switch off the fuel whilst in flight. I cannot do that whilst driving my car, flight crew shouldn't be able to do that either.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I read somewhere else they turned the fuel switches on but it was too late to get the fuel to the engines and power back up before they crashed. Seems like a Boeing fault to me, buts thatls just pure uninformed biased opinion LOL

 

[butters]

It doesn't look good for the manufacturer of the plane, Boeing.

It should be impossible (not merely difficult) to switch off the fuel whilst in flight. I cannot do that whilst driving my car, flight crew shouldn't be able to do that either.

don't they have to have that ability, to switch off fuel to engines that have caught fire, for instance?

 

[Bray123]

don't they have to have that ability, to switch off fuel to engines that have caught fire, for instance?

Dunno, it just seems weird. Diverting fuel to just one engine shouldn't mean the ability to 'Make The Plane Crash'.

 

[butters]

Dunno, it just seems weird. Diverting fuel to just one engine shouldn't mean the ability to 'Make The Plane Crash'.

a plane should be perfectly capable of a safe landing with only one working engine; I see what you're saying, though, about having a system that's foolproof to would-be kamikaze terrorist pilots.

from the report I saw last night on the crash, both the switches (to feed fuel to the engines) had been engaged but both suddenly turned off and though the pilots managed to re-engage them it was too late.

There was some warning about these switches on this make of plane sometimes not locking into position and they are trying to assess if this might be what happened here or if it was some kind of pilot error or other mechanical/electrical failure.

 

[HumpDayHoratio]

It doesn't look good for the manufacturer of the plane, Boeing.

It should be impossible (not merely difficult) to switch off the fuel whilst in flight. I cannot do that whilst driving my car, flight crew shouldn't be able to do that either.

You have to be able to shut the Fuel off in an aircraft if the engine malfunctions. This is a safety feature and why the switch is guarded. It not only shuts the fuel off but hydraulics to the affected engine and all generator functions to help stop a fire.

You’re right, this is going to be another black eye for Boeing. My guess is they had an electrical spike that signaled the FCU to shut down on BOTH engines, and should be the tree the investigators are barking up.

If they had gained some more altitude it’s possible they could have figured out the malfunction and could have manually overridden the failsafe. They just didn’t have the time with both engines spooling down.

 

[ChloeTzang]

You have to be able to shut the Fuel off in an aircraft if the engine malfunctions. This is a safety feature and why the switch is guarded. It not only shuts the fuel off but hydraulics to the affected engine and all generator functions to help stop a fire.

You’re right, this is going to be another black eye for Boeing. My guess is they had an electrical spike that signaled the FCU to shut down on BOTH engines, and should be the tree the investigators are barking up.

If they had gained some more altitude it’s possible they could have figured out the malfunction and could have manually overridden the failsafe. They just didn’t have the time with both engines spooling down.

From what I read, they switched the fuel back on about 10 seconds after it turned off, but that wasn't enugh time to regain enough power.....it does make you concerned about flying on Boeings tho. To many failures. It's not like passengers should be guineapigs.

Several questions have emerged as the fuel lever is designed to be 'highly reliable' and are constructed to stop unintentional activation, with one of India's leading aviation experts, Captain Mohan Ranganthan, suggesting it may have been deliberate. Each lever has to be pulled upwards to be unlocked, before it can be flipped and they also have further protective guard brackets to safeguard against any bumps and nudges. 'It has to be done manually, it cannot be done automatically or due to a power failure,' Captain Ranganathan told NDTV of the fuel levers. 'The fuel selectors they aren't the sliding type they are always in a slot.

and

Investigators are currently focusing on a previous Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2018, which said some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were put into the aircrafts with the locking feature disengaged. Although the problem was never deemed unsafe, an Airworthiness Directive (AD), which is legally enforceable, was issued to correct the problem with some of the levers. Boeing 787-8 aircrafts, as well as the Air India plane, use the same design switch. And due to the SAIB only being recommended, Air India did not carry out advised inspections.

At the crash site, both fuel switches were found in the run position with the report detailing there had been indications of both engines relighting before the low-altitude crash. An ex-investigator with India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) speculated whether the switch may have tripped due to possible issues with the plane electronic control unit. Capt Kishore Chinta told the BBC: 'Can the fuel cut-off switches be triggered electronically by the plane's electronic control unit without movement by the pilot? If the fuel cut-off switches tripped electronically, then it's a cause for concern.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...a-crash-flight-safety-expert-revalations.html

 

[HumpDayHoratio]

From what I read, they switched the fuel back on about 10 seconds after it turned off, but that wasn't enugh time to regain enough power.....it does make you concerned about flying on Boeings tho. To many failures. It's not like passengers should be guineapigs.

Several questions have emerged as the fuel lever is designed to be 'highly reliable' and are constructed to stop unintentional activation, with one of India's leading aviation experts, Captain Mohan Ranganthan, suggesting it may have been deliberate. Each lever has to be pulled upwards to be unlocked, before it can be flipped and they also have further protective guard brackets to safeguard against any bumps and nudges. 'It has to be done manually, it cannot be done automatically or due to a power failure,' Captain Ranganathan told NDTV of the fuel levers. 'The fuel selectors they aren't the sliding type they are always in a slot.

and

Investigators are currently focusing on a previous Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2018, which said some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were put into the aircrafts with the locking feature disengaged. Although the problem was never deemed unsafe, an Airworthiness Directive (AD), which is legally enforceable, was issued to correct the problem with some of the levers. Boeing 787-8 aircrafts, as well as the Air India plane, use the same design switch. And due to the SAIB only being recommended, Air India did not carry out advised inspections.

At the crash site, both fuel switches were found in the run position with the report detailing there had been indications of both engines relighting before the low-altitude crash. An ex-investigator with India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) speculated whether the switch may have tripped due to possible issues with the plane electronic control unit. Capt Kishore Chinta told the BBC: 'Can the fuel cut-off switches be triggered electronically by the plane's electronic control unit without movement by the pilot? If the fuel cut-off switches tripped electronically, then it's a cause for concern.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...a-crash-flight-safety-expert-revalations.html

This appears to be the case. I haven’t followed the reports in a couple of weeks but all you posted is consistent with a duel engine rollback.

Not exactly sure about Boeings, but most aircraft the fuel switches are technically a three function switch. Cutoff-shuts fuel off to respective engine. ON/RUN-allows fuel to flow to engine and in this position it enables automatic boost pump operation, cross feeding of fuel, APU operation, and will trigger low pressure pumps once fuel flow drops below a prescribed level.

It appears for whatever reason that both engines spooled down, the low pressure switch activated the pumps and the engines relit…at that point though, there just wasn’t enough time or altitude to recover. Just as a point of reference, a turbofan engine takes around 6-8secs to spool up from a full power off condition. That’s just the pilot pulling the power levers back and then firwalling it. If it had to relight it would have taken upwards of 20 seconds possibly…