Air India Tragedy
It is a tragedy, but it seems as if may not be Boeing's fault, or GE for that matter.
The two engines on the Air India flight shut down within one second of each other before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed last month in Ahmedabad, India, killing at least 260 people, according to a preliminary report released Friday.
Both engine fuel control switches that, if pulled while in flight, cut power to the engines, transitioned from the “run” to “cutoff” settings as the plane took off, according to the report.
In the recovered cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off fuel to the engine. The other pilot responded that he didn’t, according to the 15-page report.
The switches moved back to “run” and one engine was regaining thrust when the plane crashed.
The report doesn’t specify which of the two pilots asked the other about the switches. Both pilots had an adequate rest period before the flight, underwent preflight breath analyzer tests and were deemed fit to fly, according to the report. The first officer was flying the plane and the captain was monitoring during takeoff.
I would think that this kind of scenario would be impossible, but during takeoff the plane would be operating under manual control, so there is no auto-pilot to prevent this kind of scenario.
I see some emergency repairs now, to prevent this from happening in the future.
The two engines on the Air India flight shut down within one second of each other before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed last month in Ahmedabad, India, killing at least 260 people, according to a preliminary report released Friday.
Both engine fuel control switches that, if pulled while in flight, cut power to the engines, transitioned from the “run” to “cutoff” settings as the plane took off, according to the report.
In the recovered cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off fuel to the engine. The other pilot responded that he didn’t, according to the 15-page report.
The switches moved back to “run” and one engine was regaining thrust when the plane crashed.
The report doesn’t specify which of the two pilots asked the other about the switches. Both pilots had an adequate rest period before the flight, underwent preflight breath analyzer tests and were deemed fit to fly, according to the report. The first officer was flying the plane and the captain was monitoring during takeoff.
I would think that this kind of scenario would be impossible, but during takeoff the plane would be operating under manual control, so there is no auto-pilot to prevent this kind of scenario.
I see some emergency repairs now, to prevent this from happening in the future.
