Air India Crash – INTRIGUING Premlim Report
I’m not going to summarise the Air India crash preliminary report in this article. There is a good video here that does that. In this article I point out some potential anomalies I see in the report.
Voice Recorder Time Line
We are given a time when the MAYDAY MAYDAY message is sent.
However one pilot asks the other why they “cutoff” (it’s assumed they are talking about the Fuel Control Switch) but the time of this question is not detailed.
Given how so many people are pouncing on this line as clear evidence that the we are looking at pilot suicide I find it a bit perplexing why the preliminary report wouldn’t want to put a time to this exchange in relation to the Fuel Control switch status times.
Persumptions
Some assumptions are being made and I’m not sure they are well founded.
Switch Status
The reply to the “why did you cutoff” question from the pilot was “I didn’t”.
Even usually unbiased commentators on this incident are saying they find this “hard to believe”. I wonder on what basis?
Did the captain actually see the fuel control switches in the “cutoff” position or was he responding to the secondary display saying the fuel control switches were in the cutoff position?
It would take the asking pilot a fraction of a second to check their status and if they were indeed in the cutoff position to put them back to “Run”. But this did not happen, it took 10 seconds for the switch for engine 1 to go back to Run and 14 seconds for engine 2.
Was it the junior pilot asking the question and therefore believed the answer of the captain without question?
And why would there be a 4 second delay between setting the switches back to “Run”?
01 sec
In the report it says there was “01 sec” between the each switch being put to “Cutoff”. As a layman reading these reports I find the phrase strange.
Why the zero in front of the one? I perhaps can understand with a date, for example in the article is says “01 May” but when we are talking in seconds, 0.1 is possible. Is 01 a typo, does could it actually be 0.1 sec. If so, we are looking at something very different.
RAT Deployment – Time
We have the exact times from the flight recorder for the switch status changes. We even have the time the RAT started supplying hydraulic pressure. But for some reason the report relies on grainy CCTV footage to identify the time the RAT was actually deployed. I find this very strange.
RAT Deployment – Timing
In Jeffostrof’s video he gives the time of RAT deployment time as being the same as the switches being set to cutoff. To manually deploy the RAT, the button is located above the pilot’s head. And apparently the button needs to be pressed for one second before the RAT is deployed. So realistically the RAT needed to be activated before the switches changed status. And yet one pilot asks the other about the switches and not the RAT deployment!?
Or did the RAT deploy automatically and if so why?
Other Interesting Things – Air India 171
The following things could have been altered in the impact.
The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) said the throttles were on take off thrust for the full flight, yet the levers were in idle position in the aircraft. (How easy are they to move)
The flaps lever was in the position recorded by the the FDR. (Is the flaps lever harder to move than the throttles?)
The fuel control switches were in “Run” position at time of impact as FDR recorded.
Landing gear switch was partially moved forward. FDR said gear was down. Yet video footage potentially shows gear partially raised.
More Questions Than Answers
I’m not sure if the preliminary report has made things clearer.
Many pieces of information have been given but they have been given no context. (Voice recordings without time for example). It’s almost like an IKEA instruction booklet but with the stages jumbled.
I would have thought with so much speculation surrounding the incident, the report would have gone above and beyond to ensure it clarified the situation rather than muddy it.
Perhaps there are things on the voice recordings that make it abundantly clear what happened and this prelim report is softening people up for the shocking conclusion.
Clarification – Air India Preliminary Report
In my opinion, until the voice recording is released with a timeline versus the FDR, everything is going to be speculation.
It seems clear at least one of the pilots knew there was an issue with Fuel Control status but we don’t know why (physical or digital indication or both).
Was a comment made about RAT deployment or was it automatic? If it’s automatic the narrative about a suicide pilot probably goes out of the window completely.
And come to think of it, a manual deployment by someone who is trying to crash the plane makes no sense either for the suicide narrative.
The only thing that really came from the report is the switch situation and the fact that these switches may have had an issue where the pull up part of their activation was not implemented. Probably a nothing burger.
Everything else voice recorder wise, because of the lack of context, has just thrown more petrol on the speculation fire. Which is a shame.
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