Posts by user "pampel" [Posts: 10 Total up-votes: 0 Pages: 1]

That looks like a totally normal take off, until the plane simply stops climbing and starts descending, with no visible changes in attitude, puffs of smoke or anything else obvious.

The visual evidence of the RAT being deployed (or not) is a bit dubious, but the audio evidence is pretty solid. It's also corroborated by the best eye witnesses we have, the pilots, explaining that they had lost power in their mayday call. And corroborated again by the second best eye witness we have, the passenger who survived, commenting on the 'green flickering lights' of the emergency exit signs indicating power loss. And corroborated again by the (now confirmed) posts on social media from the previous set of passengers complaining that aircon, entertainment, lights etc on the plain weren't working.

The idea that the flaps weren't set for take off also seems incredibly dubious given that in several frames of the original footage you can see the engines through the wings, on both sides, something not explainable by grainy footage or compression artifacts, and only possible if the flaps are down.

Edit to add: the reports on social media from the previous passengers complaining about non-functional electronics have been confirmed

If the fuel was cut off, how long would it take until the engines spooled down? How long would it take, given wind-milling etc, for that to result in a loss of power? I'd love to see a timeline of the flight with the fuel being cut off that is remotely compatible with the events we saw, because I don't think it's possible.

I was initially going to post that a spectral analysis was a bit academic given that the similarity is plainly obvious just from listening to the audio, but there is something to be said for having visual evidence that 1) the sound had a pitch and distinct harmonics, rather than just being the noise you get from the roar of a jet, 2) the sound had the specific pitch and harmonic relationships of a RAT, and 3) that pitch fell exactly as you'd expect from the doppler shift of a plane flying away from you.

This doesn't make any sense. The plane was in the air for approximately 30 seconds, the plane stops climbing around 12 seconds after take off, and the noise of the RAT is heard 11 seconds before the plane crashes - even if we assume the RAT both deploys instantly and deployed the exact moment that video began recording, that only gives the pilots a 7 second window to perform an action that results in it being deployed.

There just isn't enough time for the RAT to be deployed as a result of any action by the crew, IMHO. And to demonstrate how long 7 seconds is - that's enough to say 20 words, assuming no interruptions .

It's hard to know what conclusion to draw from this. You might read the summary and think the planes where grounded because Air India found some sort of maintenance related smoking gun, but the article also states that all of the 787-8 Dreamliners the DGCA inspected so far (24 of 33?) were found to be safe, and suggests the planes were grounded due to poor, but not immediately threatening, maintenance. It's also interesting that it is only 787-8 Dreamliners that are being grounded.

The only reasonable takeaway is that this is further evidence that the crash was not caused by the pilots.

True, but it took Boeing 4 months to ground Max 8's, three days after, and only because of, the second fatal accident.

Boeing, in their very troubled state, will be doing everything they can to shift the blame and keep their fleet in the air, the Indian authorities and AI will be doing everything they can do pin the blame on Boeing/GE, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence etc...its very shaky ground to draw conclusions from.

I'm not sure you can infer much from them being sensitive to their somewhat wrecked reputation - any directive for their aircraft, even if it was for a virtually insignificant piece of the puzzle, would cause a flurry of bad press and speculation. They will absolutely be fighting tooth and nail to avoid it. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, for all sides in this.

First, 10 seconds is not a long time. Second, I don't know where you are getting the idea that there was a 10 second gap between the pilots noticing or asking 'why did you cut off' and the switches being reset, because the report doesn't give a timestamp for either exclamation from the pilots. It may well have only been a couple of seconds between them noticing and resetting them, the report simply doesn't give that detail.

The truth will be in what was said after 'I didnt', but that's conspicuously absent from the report.

The report doesn't give us the words one pilot used to ask why he did the cutoff, nor the words used by the other pilot to explain that he didn't, nor any indication of the tone of either pilot or even who said what. Some people *believe* that it was co-pilot Clive Kunder who asked why the switch was cutoff, but only because he was PF and would/should have had both hands on the control column during take-off, leaving the captain/PM Sumeet Sabharwal to be the one who cut the switches, but this is very far from conclusive. The investigators will know exactly who said what and when, so it is very strange that it is left out of the report, but is not evidence of anything in itself.

The only distinction the report makes is that the question was 'why did you cut off' rather than 'did you cut off', which suggests one of the pilots saw the other cut the switches, which in turn suggests either (a) the pilot who did the cutoff had done it accidentally and wasn't aware of it, or (b) the pilot who did the cutoff was well aware of what they did but then lied about it despite having clearly been seeing doing it.

Given the question was 'why', it seems equally plausible that it was the PF Kunder who transitioned the switches accidentally as part of some muscle memory blunder, and it was the PM Sabharwal who asked Kunder why he cutoff, who then replied that he didn't, because the fact he'd made the mistake hadn't registered.

OTOH, it might just be a sloppy transcription.


I totally agree with this, it makes no sense at all, especially after his 'just one or two more flights' statement. The guy had already moved cities to help look after his father, and was considering retiring early to have even more time to dedicate. Again, for me, this points to a blunder by Kunder.