Posts about: "New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV)" [Posts: 11 Page: 1 of 1]¶

This is some news:


Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol interviewed

A slightly less sensationalised version of the same conversation reported in The Sun (posted above), with Minister of State For Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol, though unsurprisingly it doesn't really tell us anything new.

The potential for sabotage is clearly a valid line of investigation in the absence - so far - of any clear evidence of more prosaic malfunction or errors, but I doubt it is anything more than one of dozens of lines of attention.

Do politicians usually get access to the data from their investigators in real time or do they have to wait for the reports like the rest of us? This chap is a junior minister, he was asked direct questions and answered appropriately but why would we conclude he has intimate knowledge of the specifics relating to the date download ?

his comments come from this interview but I don\x92t speak Hindi:
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sabo...-mohol-8788920

Posted yesterday, this is from NDTV who conducted the interview/conversation with the Minister himself.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sabo...-mohol-8788920 Their own english language version seems most likely to be accurate to the actual conversation.

This was discussed previously, and it seems highly improbable that the Minister had anything much in the way of a briefing or insider knowledge of the state of the investigation or its findings.

A brief summary of what is in this article.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/air-...-found-8812035

You don\x92t \x93flick switches in the Sim\x94 for no apparent reason.
Even Indian sources are now reporting on the possibility of intent.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/air-...-probe-8864239

In my sim experience, I’ve seen so many resets where switches are flicked at lightning speed. I’m not talking about the chaps in the front seat, I’m talking about the instructor/sim operator. I’m also not suggesting this is a major cause, just agreeing it could be a possible additional factor.

Intent is a possibility but I’m leaning away from it because of the other factors…gear remained down at positive rate, the ensuing conversation and an apparent attempt to immediately rectify the situation. Much like Germanwings, I’d say a suicidal pilot would remain quiet and uncooperative once they’ve taken the unthinkable decision.

Very helpful, thanks! One recommendation for change: since we don't know what words were used by the pilots, how about using "CVR: query cutoff" rather than "why did you cutoff"?
Most of your comments in the thread are extremely sensible but I take issue with both points you made in this post.

Firstly, you'll have seen plenty of things to disprove the "without a hitch" in this thread alone , and as a professional pilot you'll no doubt know of many others - including switches moved in-flight as a brain-fart , or switches moved by things like falling objects. Waiting for the final report may tell us if it would have made a difference in this case, but the lower tier of the safety pyramid (non-severe outcomes) is definitely already populated with plenty of examples of "hitches".

Secondly, I'm absolutely inclined to agree that the switches were moved deliberately (though perhaps absent-mindedly), but I'm genuinely shocked and baffled that you are already willing to assert that "It wasn't a brain-fart". Perhaps those words were typed in haste and you didn't re-read what you had written? (A brain-fart, in other words.)
That interview has a series of very poorly judged comments by someone who should certainly know better, and IMHO adds nothing of value. It doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of an action-slip/brain-fart/execution-error as cause, and the interviewee voices his suspicion about a cover-up based on the identities of the speakers of key remarks not being shared at this point. Surreal.

Please stop with this utter nonsense.
The throttle quadrant was replaced in 2023 for unrelated reasons. The report states so.
Crews don’t habitually places any items near those switches and ffs how would sand even get in there.
These switches were manipulated by hand and (again) even Indian media is reporting there may have been an issue with the crew.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/air-...-probe-8864239

Well, I'm happy to confirm that what Captain Ranganathan says in that interview makes 100% sense to me!

My own experience of simulator details was that there was always a very serious risk of adverse training occurring during the reconfiguration between the elements of a sim session.

During an actual training element pilots were of course expected to take the utmost care to brief, identify, confirm and verify every switch/lever movement and operate in the safest way possible using SOPs. But usually, just to save precious sim time, during the manual re-configuration for the next element instructors would typically rattle off a very long series of selections necessitating both pilots working flat out, hands flying around the cockpit trying to keep up.

Very easy to still be re-setting the fuel control switches while the instruction coming through the headset was \x91set the gear up\x92 (or any other combination of switches and selections). Massive risk of hardwiring in a mental slip for the future. Personally I found this to be one of the most discombobulating bits of sim details, completely destroying good \x91SOP hygiene\x92 and detaching the crew from the mental model of how the aircraft came to be in it\x92s suddenly new configuration and place in the sky.

Honestly I can think of only one occasion during my whole career where a sim instructor said, \x91Ok chaps that\x92s the first part done, hands off, flight freeze is on, now motor your seats back and listen in while we brief and the sim auto sets itself for the next bit.\x92 He then carefully spent two or three minutes building up our SA before we motored forward to get on with it. Complete revelation!