The report says the black box reports the fuel cutoff switches being activated. That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them, it just means that the fly-by-wire system reacted to a fuel cutoff event.
"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 cutoff.
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."
It does:
1. Those switches have physical interlocks and cannot be manipulated by any computer system.
2. The flight data recorder is measuring the position of the switches; they aren't inferring the position from some system state. There's a "position of this switch" channel.
The switches were physically moved in the cockpit, that's basically ground truth. The question now is who and why.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-787-technical-features-guide...
" Advanced electric controls
The 787 entered service with an improved fly-by-wire flight control system. Rather than mechanical processes, the systems convert flight deck crew inputs into electrical signals. Still, there were additional advancements with the type."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-ma...
787 (Dreamliner) was pushing hard for weight reduction, and it would not surprise me at all if the switch output fed a digital computer input rather than routing directly to the fuel shutoff valves, but I don't have any direct knowledge of this.
I think you have to really reach to make this not pilot error. I know it’s appealing to call this a Boeing problem, but the evidence just from this prelim report is very compelling.
If you think it’s not pilot error, you can make some fake Manifold dollars: https://manifold.markets/JohnHughes/what-will-be-the-officia...
The fact that your car's engine stops doesn't mean you turned the ignition switch off. Anyone who has had to troubleshoot a car with intermitent electrical faults knows that.
The switches physically moved, and there is no motor to actuate them without physical intervention.
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Why wouldn’t this qualify as a murder-suicide, assuming your theory is correct?
It feels qualitatively different than someone pointing a gun at someone else and then themselves, which is usually what pops to mind when you hear “murder-suicide”.
You’re correct though, it qualifies.
So I can't imagine how it could have been done accidentally.
If he was trying to do something else, he would have called it out. E.g. an audible “gear up.”
In my view it would be quite hard to move them by accident, and probably not possible to move at once.
It would be interesting to know if the plane has any other switches of the same type, that are routinely activated.
This implies intent.
> One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
To me this reads like an unintentional error with colossol implications.
Are you suggesting there was malicious intent and then a delibrately crafted denial by the perpetrator?
Pilots are drilled from day one that the fuel switches are sacred. After a few accidents where one engine failed and the pilot accidentally turned off the remaining functional engine, the training was overhauled so that it would be impossible for it to be an easy action done by mistake. One pilot is required to ask the other for confirmation before toggling the switch, I believe. It wouldn’t be something you’d do from muscle memory.
It easy to say that when you know there's likely no way to prove or disprove whether it as an accident or not. Unless a pilot left a note stating his future intentions, there's no way to determine their state of mind.
If there was no mechanical failure, the only remaining possibility is deliberate action. And if it was mechanical failure, we’d see an emergency air worthiness directive being issued, which we haven’t.
I'm also interested in the earlier switch defects where the switches were installed with the locking mechanism disengaged on some 737s and inspection was advised for 787, but the incident aircraft was not inspected.
The airworthiness directive for that [1] indicates switches with locking disengaged should be replaced, but I wonder if it's possible to reingage the locking somehow, which could result in a situation where the locking wasn't engaged, the switches changed inadverdently and then when restored the run position the lock was engaged... that's a big reach, of course.
All that said, assuming the switch was working as designed, there's a semantic argument around deliberate and intentional. If the switch requires specific action, it's fair to call it deliberate action; but if the switcher thought they were activating a different switch, it's not murder.
Either way, there's no sense rushing to a conclusion of murder. Assuming one of the pilots activated the switch, they have already died and they are beyond the effects of human judgement; so we may as well wait for further information.
[1] https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/NM-18-33.pdf/SIB_NM-18-33_1
Honestly I think the chances are good that you're right, but the way you're presenting it as absolutely certain strikes me as overconfident, borderline arrogant.
Also, what's with the whole "staking your reputation" thing? What reputation? Are you some kind of famous journalist? Is there some reason we should care about you "covering live news" ? Serious questions -- I personally have no idea who you are.
I also don't recognize this guy's name, but I do find it ironic that his profile is possibly the most well-linked to a other identities I've ever seen on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sillysaurusx
It’s mostly a very public "If I’m wrong, I won’t ever do this again." I’ve been writing informative HN comments since 2008 on various accounts. It’s a big deal to me not to spread misinformation or be mistaken in a situation like this.
The victims also deserve to be acknowledged. At this point the overwhelming body of evidence points to a deliberate act. Pilots are trained never to touch the fuel switches in flight, and (I believe) there is a verbal confirmation required before toggling. This captain had over 8,000 hours.
The reason I’m so confident is because I trust the system. It’s designed so that if either of the two pilots do anything, they verbally call it out, e.g. "gear up." A callout like that followed by fuel switch cutoff would indicate it was accidental. But as far as I know, there was no callout.
The pilot flying is also the one who asks for gear up and such. It’s the job do the pilot monitoring to perform those actions.
Suppose it was accidental. That would mean the pilot flying was fiddling with switches instead of flying; that’s against SOP. Or it would mean the pilot monitoring was performing uncommanded actions, which is also against SOP. It’s not something that happens on a whim. Both are contradictions, hence, no accident.
As for being overconfident or arrogant, what matters to me is accuracy, and passing along that accuracy. No one seemed to be willing to publicly call this a malicious action, so I did. If I’m wrong, you can be sure I’ll feel terrible for weeks, post an apology in the thread that shows I was wrong, and then bow out in disgrace, never to cover news again.
People here did the same thing when the common belief was that there was a non-zero chance of nuclear war. I was one of the few voices in that thread saying absolutely not, stop stressing yourself out for no reason.
I’m simply one voice of many. As always, it’s up to the reader to decide what to believe.
Then why not either wait until there's more information or temper your remarks by acknowledging there's still ambiguity? That would directly hedge against spreading misinformation, whereas staking your reputation on it and then shutting up if you're wrong only works after the misinformation has spread and doesn't seem very productive.
I think the right response to realizing you've spread misinformation (in the event that you turn out to be mistaken [I think it's 60-40 in favor of deliberate]) is to temper your statements and rededicate yourself to checking the facts, not removing yourself from the discussion altogether. And if you were keeping your mouth shut, wouldn't you continue to see discussions you could meaningfully contribute to, and after a while wouldn't you wonder whether anyone was really benefitting from your silence?
I understand that you appear earnest. However, your history of multi-accounting on this site makes your promise to never post on a given topic again meaningless to me, because I have no expectation that you wouldn’t continue to post about it on other accounts that we don’t know about at this time, possibly because they haven’t even been created yet.
It's quite possible it's a "performed the wrong muscle memory at the worst possible moment" type of accident. This is unlikely, but anyone who thinks such a mistake is impossible doesn't know anything about human factors.
Unlikely just means "low probability." There are thousands of flights per day, so it's only a matter of time.
I take your point that we should always be suspicious of complicated, digital buses, and this is not the final report, so there’s still plenty of time to uncover weirdness. However, if the flight date reporter shows the switch being thrown, and then a few milliseconds later, shows the valve starting to close, and the same sequence happening shortly there after on the second switch and valve, I feel this would really limit the likelihood of any digital shenanigans.
And, it's _two_ switches.
Even taking intent for granted, to deny suicide in a case like this would be to suppose that the person responsible expected to survive while everyone else died. What could possibly support that conclusion?
- There is no chance that the fuel switches were turned off by accident.
- They were off for about five seconds. One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
- They were flipped back on five seconds later. So, ten seconds of off time total.
- It takes a long time for jet engines to spool up; it’s not like a propeller, where the thrust comes back instantly. Ten seconds at 600ft was a death sentence.
- This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
So the big question is, who was flying? The report doesn’t say. (EDIT: actually, the report says the co-pilot was the pilot flying; thanks for the correction.)
In the cockpit, one person is designated “pilot flying” and the other “pilot monitoring.” During takeoff, the pilot flying is completely focused on takeoff. This would be the perfect opportunity to betray your colleague as the pilot monitoring.
- The younger of the two was pilot flying. That means the older person was pilot monitoring.
- This person was also a few flights away from retirement.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/SE0BetkXsLg?si=LPss_su3PVTAqGCO
(They’re experienced pilots who are quite certain the switches were moved intentionally, but they carefully go out of their way not to label it as an act of malice. But, as one of them say, “maybe it was the brain fart of the century” — but the implication is, probably not.)
One of the pilots singlehandedly slaughtered ~300 people. You can believe what you’d like at this stage, but personally, I’d put money on it being the older of the two.