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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1366 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 12, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Boeing just doesn't seem to be able to catch a break.

There is a tragic crash in India with one of their 787-8. And it is nightmarish - full plane, full of fuel, just after take off crashes in residential area. There seems to be survivors which is miracle in itself.

An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, leaving at least 204 people dead.

The flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew when it was involved in what the airline has called a "tragic accident" in the city in western India.

Ahmedabad's police chief told the BBC that 204 bodies had been recovered, while 41 people were being treated for injuries.

He earlier told news agencies there appeared to be no survivors from the crash, and that some local people would also have died given where the plane came down.

Details are still emerging from the scene. Here is what we know so far.

As always for plane crashes pprune is the source for latest news, speculations, bickering, wild theories

https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/666472-plane-crash-near-ahmedabad-7.html

The WSJ reports:

Preliminary findings indicate that switches controlling fuel flow to the jet’s two engines were turned off, leading to an apparent loss of thrust shortly after takeoff, the people said. Pilots use the switches to start the jet’s engines, shut them down, or reset them in certain emergencies.

The switches would normally be on during flight, and it is unclear how or why they were turned off, these people said. The people also said it was unclear whether the move was accidental or intentional, or whether there was an attempt to turn them back on.

This is preliminary and unofficial, so this isn't necessarily the real cause; no small part of the Boeing MAX scandal was because original 'leaks' heavily emphasized pilot error over the technical faults.

But if true, this is staggering. NA255 and other takeoff misconfiguration disasters have happened, and typically reflect a long series of systemic failures in addition to pilot misconduct, but each individual step is recognizable and understandable until it was too late. By contrast, the aircraft here could not have taxi'd, or run up, or gotten down the runway with fuel cut off to both engines; they're designed so that neither one could be hit accidentally. There is no failure that would cause pilots to turn them off mid-takeoff, and not even some bizarre reason to want to try.

Which... does not leave a lot of options, and they're all bad.

EDIT: official preliminary report here:

The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off...

As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC. The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 08:08:54 UTC, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic. Thereafter at 08:08:56 UTC the Engine 2 fuel cutoff switch also transitions from CUTOFF to RUN.

I don't think there's any plausible solely-electrical or mechanical explanation that would explain these recordings.

We should wait for audio analysis. The timing of the switches being turned off critical. To the precise millisecond.

Yeah. There's been air crash analysis where they've done some absolute magic in sound analysis, up to and including detecting locations of explosions based on sound triangulation from one cockpit mic to another. I'm just not feeling very optimistic about where they could point, given:

In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.

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