Posts by user "Lonewolf_50" [Posts: 30 Total up-votes: 0 Pages: 2]

No, and editors no longer hold their feet to the fire.

Have never flown 787. Comment only about the investigation which is underway.

With GE and Boeing sending expert reps to India (engine and aircraft manufacturers respectively) digging into the details should inform them of what occurred, but as I understand the process, the public information flow will come from the Nation whom they are assisting.

Have any of you who have done investigations at this level seen it work out otherwise?

Aside: five of my work colleagues were either born in Gujarat, or their parents were. I asked
"I realize that India is a very big place, but are you concerned about any relatives being among the casualties?"
I got four head shakes (no) and one reply that got me to almost spill my coffee.
"Nobody in my {extended} family would live near to an airport. It's too noisy."
It took me a second to register that as a "no" presented in a way that I wasn't expecting.

As I read back to explanations of TCMA further up, an additional criterion seems to be that the engine is at idle . I don't think that your curt summary fits, due to being incomplete.

Journos, when it comes to aviation, are morons. Kind of like my social skills, in my twenties, after a few more pints than I ought to have had.
That is what you are missing.
We thank you for the source of innocent merriment.
While I enjoyed your post, a lot, 787 has been in service for over a decade and there are over 1,000 of them doing their duty day in and day out. Yes, battery issues arose, but resolved.

Based on the mishap investigations I did, more than one of which involved fatalities, there is a whole family of maintenance / company culture errors possible that seem to me to get short shrift in the discussion here: thread number 1 and thread number 2.

But here's the problem: Air India, for very understandable reasons, isn't about to open the kimono until they are forced to.

Yeah, some fuel samples make you go "Whaaat?" And then you keep draining fuel to see how much is in there, and you call up the Maintenance Control folks and tell them "We have a bad sample out here, call those idiots at the fuel farm..."
I like the cut of your jib.
Not sure if you are right, and not familiar enough with 787 to check the fuel flow logic, but a friend of mine dead-sticked a single engine trainer into a field due to water in the fuel ... 20 minutes after takeoff.
It could have happened earlier.

Maybe Jeff Guzzetti reads PPRuNe.
Yeah, that's a concern that one can do nothing about, but I recall Egypt Air 990 having that same sort of obstacle to the investigation (cultural/political). (No, I am not saying that the causes are the same). My point is that each nation's transparency varies, regardless of what ICAO calls for.
Unless one is on PPRuNe, a haven for the garden variety Boeing-basher. (Though at times B seem to bring it on themselves...)

From two threads I see this: a sudden loss of thrust was the initiating event after a successful take off - all of this other electronic stuff was a result of that.
What I will be paying close attention to is what information comes out as regards maintenance and ground handling for that particular hull...and what isn't said. (I guess that may be a while in coming - and I do agree in the general sense that giving the benefit of the doubt is a good position to take at this point in time).

I got the idea that with no (or very little) thrust, and with the aircraft falling, the pilot (may have) realized that he was in out of control flight , and falling.
In a pedantic sense: if you make control inputs, and the aircraft won't or can't respond to them, you are in out of control flight .
The whole event happened pretty quickly. How far into "we are doomed" that his senses told him they were can have informed his decision to say something about it. (the human mind is an interesting thing).
There's also the matter of temporal distortion which can happen during stress or high adrenalin events. (I experienced that during the course of an aircraft accident: not on topic for this thread).
As to conformance with ICAO, not all investigations make good on that.


I sincerely hope that this one does.

(Note: some of what I refer to as out of control flight seems to be called upset in commercial transport jargon).

They did not set out to fly a glider, and they had intended to takeoff and climb, not glide, nor land outside of an airfield boundary. That said, your pedantry from a different angle is accepted.
True, but what the crew were trying to do was climb after takeoff. Let's get back to basics here: power is a way to control flight.
Back from early flying, when you were first trying it out, your instructor taught you that Power plus attitude equals performance. (While true enough, power plus attitude plus configuration is a more accurate formulation).
That reply to you offered, yes, your response is well put.
(Maybe it's my rotary wing experience that puts "power" into what controls flight, but no matter, we are discussing a 787-8).
Yes. I did point out that I was engaging in pedantry. I appreciate all of the responses. Thanks to all.

Glad to hear that the Indian Government has a timeline for a prelim report. If it takes them a bit more time than ICAO wants, with alerts or bulletins issued as various things are confirmed, that probably serves the larger interest.

It is one thing to not rule it out, it is quite another to find evidence of it.


Then why didn't that happen on the previous flight from Deli to Ahmedabad, or any of the previous flights since that engine install in March?
Thanks for the update, and in particular that bolded bit.

Thank you for that answer, edge cases do abound in complex systems, but would not moving the throttles forward by hand (as the thrust was beginning to reduce {for that strange reason}) overcome that and restore thrust?
(As I don't fly the 787, I may be missing something basic on how the systems work).

Thanks for the whole answer, more stuff to learn.

@Sailvi767, thank you for that video. Nice illustration.

About the previous video regarding Air India Flight 171: when Geoffrey Thomas said that "the aircraft appears to hover" at about time 2:00, I wondered at what kind of aviation expert he is supposed to be.
The aircraft was in forward flight once it left the ground, and until the flight ended (unless it stalled near the bitter end...FDR should clear that up in due course...but my guess is that it didn't stall even then).
It stopped climbing, sure, but it didn't hover.

Concur with the assessment of "clickbait"

Y'all are killing me.
If the intent is malicious, then if you know how the system works then you know how to try and confuse the investigation afterwards so that your family doesn't have to deal with you being the devil who did this. Read the entire of MH 370 if you doubt me.
Yeah.

I had the "opportunity" to investigate more than one fatal crash/mishap, and we dove down into the rat-hole of knobology and switch-ology. I read with some care the posts of one of our more sensible members, PJ2, as regards switches.

I'll leave the CVR extracts to those who want to run down that rat-hole, but WHO was flying and WHO was (doing all else) begins to matter.
Do any of you actually know who was PF and who was PM?
If you know that, how do you know that?

!!!! me, this thread is already going off the rails.

Right.
I want you to think about what you just posted very carefully,

They would say that, wouldn't they?
But is it a fact?

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. (And I honestly don't know).

I offer you MH 370 and the various punting that the Malaysian government did as a point of reference, as well as China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 as a point of reference.
Yes, I confess to you, I tend to be cynical.

How many of you posting in this thread have bothered to read the report?
I did.
Some very interesting detail is available therein. (In particular, fuel).
If you haven't read the whole report, please stop posting until you have.
Damnit!
Double You Anchors abound.

*sigh*

Let's take the sketchy CVR extract as a given for the moment.

So there's this hard working FO doing the takeoff. He wants to do a good job and impress favorably the Training Captain.

For (reasons that I cannot fathom) the training captain On Takeoff On A Revenue Flight chops the fuel before they get to 400 feet AGL.

Yes, that makes no freaking sense. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

The natural response from PF to the PM (who is the training captain) is some version of "WTF with the fuel switches?"

And the response is "Uh, no, I didn't do that."

Think about this for a moment.

How many "WTF?" things erupt in your brain if that was the sequence of events?

Full Disclosure: I was in charge of the CRM training for the Navy (all of it) for a couple of years (and yes, that was a couple of decades ago). We got our CRM stuff, mostly, From The Commercial Airline Industry.

But, honestly, that reported back and forth between PF and PM has me smacking my forehead in disbelief... given the advanced state of CRM training in today's airline industry.

I confess to you all: I am more confused by this report than I was by the first two days of "data" eruption after the crash.

Sorry, stop right there.
What reason would any 787 Training Captain have for doing that at rotation, or slightly after rotation?
Really. Think about that. It makes Zero Sense.

@tdracers's point about the startle effect is at least plausible.

Thank you for your kind reply. I confess to you that my post was not my best effort. I was in a deeply cynical mode when typing it.

I've reviewed the report a couple of more times since then, with some of the insights offered by PPRuNers to aid me. It had seemed to me, on first read, that they (whomever approved the final language of the report that we have all read) were hanging the FO out to dry...but...that may have been me reading too much between the lines . As others have noted, there's a lot not said.
Yes, that makes sense.

I've got some thoughts on compartmentalization still cooking in my head, to include "where was the captain's attention during take off, something he'd done hundreds of times?" I do not yet have those thoughts in coherent enough form to concisely present them to the very critical (as well it should be!) audience here.

The CRM piece has me grabbing at straws. I had mentioned in a previous post the bit about No Fast Hands and Confirmation of important switches/handles/levers before activating as general CRM principals, which it seems someone did not adhere to.

Nothing (yet) can tell me "what did the captain see with his eyes during the three seconds between leaving the ground and the switches being moved?"
I am not sure how much of the EICAS info ends up being recorded on the EAFR/FDR, or if there was a light that illuminated before the switches were moved, perhaps triggering a 'fast hands' moment / error...
Perhaps a subsequent report can shed some light on that.

And yes, it might have been an attempt at suicide for {X reasons} which are known only to someone who is now dead.

Yeah, that's a part of the CM piece I am still puzzling over: authority gradient.

tdracer, thank you.

I have watched the nonsense posted about 'that is a bad design' as regards the fuel switches and have bitten my tongue.

It's a sane and rational design choice unless one is a default Boeing basher.

There are two sets of two switches near to each other (see the photos and figures further up) that are important (one due to fuel, one due to a primary flight control, the horizontal stab). They are protected from inadvertent movement in two different ways based on their physical proximity.
1) Stab (influencing) switches use the covered guard. (The Horizontal Stab is a primary flight control).
2) The fuel switches are stopped from casual movement by the design of that switch (which has been discussed to death) unless you pull out then them move them to the other position.

See how this works, folks who don't fly?

Stab switches: uncover, then move. Two steps.
Fuel switches: pull out, then move. Two steps.
They look different and they feel different.

Given their proximity, the designers (who have to deal with ergonomics) provided both a visual and a tactile clue that they are different, and what switch your fingers are touching or trying to move.

Will that choice guarantee that some idiot won't activate a wrong switch?
No, it won't, because you can't idiot proof everything ... the universe will always provide a bigger idiot.

But it does offer two, not one, cues to "wait, what switch am I about to activate?" for the trained user and is thus a sound design choice. Yes, pilots do undergo training for how to use all of the switches in the cockpit/flight deck.
Really.
Not kidding about this.
(Have I ever moved a wrong lever or switch? Yes).

Oh, by the way, those who have posted here who fly the 737, 757, 767, 777, and 787, have affirmed the operation and usefulness of the fuel switches. IIRC one of our 777 flyers pointed out that his captain had written up one such switch since it wasn't working right.

Yes, friends on PPRuNe, you can know how they work and if they are worn, or feel as though they are not working correctly. You can do the write up and the maintenance team can replace the switch (or fix it, or replace the quadrant, yadda yadda).
As noted by others, those switches are used on every flight.
You'll know how it should feel/work, and if it doesn't feel or work correctly you make mention of that to the engineers/maintenance crew (depending on which side of the pond you are on).

The Bulletin from several years ago does not prevent normal maintenance, and write ups, from happening on a routine basis (as with various other things on aircraft that get written up).

I had three switch design and placement factors explained to me - visual, tactile, and positional - over 40 years ago when I was going through blind cockpit checks prior to getting initially qualified in the SH-2F.
As I flew other aircraft I would notice various choices made as regards all three factors. (A fascinating sub topic of its own, but I'll stop there).

I thus say to DiffTailShim, and whatever test pilot from the UK posted his noise: no, you are wrong.
The design decision is sound.
That Embraer did/does it differently (which is cool, there is more than one way to peel an onion ) has little or nothing to do with this accident.

One could argue that their proximity might have an impact, but that would require evidence that something to do with the Stab Switches was involved in this event.
So far, that vague mention of a write up from a previous flight about a stab light gives us a tenuous thread, but not a lot to work with.

galaxy, it was me who wasn't sure in my post from a few days ago, and I think David was trying to get me to accept that the FO was flying based on what was in the report.
Which I now do.