157
Engine fuel switches cut off before Air India crash that killed 260, preliminary report finds
(www.theguardian.com)
What the hell are these comments…?
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
157 points (98.2% liked)
World News
48361 readers
2198 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Much better take on this, highlighting possible technical fault:
Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with General Electric engines
Edit: wowsers, apparently I made a controversial comment. Let me provide the context that I based my comment on. From the guardian article:
"According to a preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, moments after take-off both the switches in the cockpit that controlled fuel going to the engines had been moved to the “cut-off” position. Moving the fuel switches almost immediately cuts the engine.
The initial report did not recommend action against Boeing, who manufactured the 787-8 Dreamliner, or General Electric who manufactured the engines."
Yeah, what this is saying is that this crash is, so far, looking to be due to pilot error:
They turned off the fuel feed to the engines right after take off, didn't realize they'd done this, didn't correct it in time, and then the plane stalled out and crashed.
An analogy would be maybe... you're driving a car, and trying to overtake someone on a highway, speed up and pass by them... and you don't realize that you've accidentally shifted into neutral, so now as you try to merge back into the correct lane, you're going way more slowly than you thought you were, and end up swerving into the car you were trying to pass, instead of ending up safely ahead of them.
Seems like it’s either deliberately negligent or sinister:
« The switches are equipped with safeguards, including a locking mechanism, to prevent accidental movement.
They are most often used to turn engines off once a plane has arrived at its airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as an engine fire. The report does not indicate there was any emergency requiring an engine cutoff.
A US aviation safety expert, John Cox, told Reuters a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. “You can’t bump them and they move, »
« The switches flipped a second apart, the report said, roughly the time it would take to shift one and then the other, according to US aviation expert John Nance. He added that a pilot would normally never turn the switches off in flight, especially as the plane is starting to climb. »
The FAA in the US had found that in some planes these switches have been installed without the locking mechanism in place. So if that was the case here, accidental triggering of the switches is potentially possible.
Yeah thats... kind of baffling.
I know that in these kinds of situations, it can come down to a combination of incompetence/being overworked, and also miscommunication or blind deference to a nonsensical command.
I am spitballing here, I don't know the internal layout of an '87 nor its exact take off procedures...
Maybe one of them somehow thought they were raising the landing gear?
I can't imagine it would be any kind of standard to like... significantly adjust flaps mere seconds after rotation...
The thing was flying (stalling) with its landing gear down the whole time, right? Never retracted up?
Is it not fairly routine to start retracting the gear soon after rotation?
...
I guess its also possible its some kind of intentional sabotage, but that would seem to either require a conspiracy or at least one of the pilots being suicidal?
Not impossible, but I am not aware of any evidence toward either of those.
The landing gear lever is located between the 2 primary flight displays while the fuel cutoff switches were directly below the throttle. They also look and operate in different ways. The only way I could see someone accidentally confusing the two is if the pilot flew other aircraft types where some function is located in the same place as the fuel cutoff switches.
Apparently the cockpit voice recording caught one pilot asking why they shut off the fuel and the other denying it. They were also turned back on right before the crash and were found in the on position, so it doesn't appear one was trying to force it off or anything.
Apparently the cockpit voice recording caught one pilot asking why they shut off the fuel and the other denying it.
Welp.
So, yeah, sounds to me like astounding levels of incompetence from the idiot pilot.
Or someone was lying.
so it doesn't appear one was trying to force it off or anything.
I don't think it indicates that given how the flight was already doomed at that point. The damage was done.
It's possible it was intentional, but unless it was a terror attack from the pilot it doesn't make much sense. Since there was no manifesto or any statement I doubt that. Suicide is technically a possibility, but why take a plane full of people and some on the ground with you? I know some people lose empathy and reason when they get to that point, but it seems significantly more likely to me that the pilot was fatigued and just did the wrong thing, hanlon's razor and all that. Mistakes are more common than you would think, they're just not usually 'cut off fuel to both engines right after takeoff' bad.
A suicide like this has happened before. It even involved the fuel being shut off.
hanlon's razor and all that
The fuel switches have been very carefully designed to take "stupidity" out of the equation.
It's going to be hard to conclude for sure that this was suicide without some form of note or other evidence we don't have yet, but really, at some point the effort it takes to come up with alternatives is going to start looking silly.
I think one of the biggest giveaways will be the voice recording and how they react to the situation. I doubt it will release publicly but it should give at least some idea to the Investigators.
And I was pretty surprised by the switches honestly, I figured they would have at least a guard and a spring loaded toggle, but it's just the spring loaded toggle. Those are used a lot for any switch you don't want moving accidentally, so it wasn't super unique or anything.
They do have guards on the sides, so it's not completely out in the open.
Hopefully politics won't get involved in the final report like it did in the EgyptAir case.
👏👏 absolute cinema
Your performance as "random commenter unable to read but pretends otherwise" is Oscar worthy.
Looking through their post history they are either non-native English speaker who is a bit of a polymath but without the actual math part or an LLM someone is having fun with reusing a prompt they devised or copied.
At least their language and tone are constant across posts, albeit a bit inscrutable. FWIW, I did get the dark humor in their/its post.
I am confused. Is he LLM? Is you LLM? Is everybody just a braindead human zombie that can be approximated by LLM?? Is internet dead even in Lemmy?
Yes, all internet dead. No escape from dead internet. I'm a bot. You're a bot. We're all bots here.
Everybody is dead Dave.