Woof. That’s two planes brought down by almost certainly intentional fuel cutoff by a pilot in a relatively short time. This 737 and the Air India 787.
There are suspicions that the air india crash may not have been pilot mistake after a second air india 787 experienced similar issues with the fuel cutoff switches not staying in the run position
An Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner was grounded after its left fuel control switch failed to stay in the ‘run’ position twice and moved to ‘cutoff’ during engine startup, an airline spokesperson said.
Fascinating. That shouldn’t be possible, but obviously this does raise doubts.
Even if there is a way for the switches to physically fail, like maybe the spring can fail to pull the switch down leaving it able move over the detent, it still seems like it would be absurdly unlikely for TWO switches to fail on the same flight, and one flip to cutoff right after the other, with a timing gap easily accounted for by a pilot turning one off after the other. My money is still, sadly, on intentional action (or possibly really awful mistake, since when one pilot asked why he put the switches in cutoff the other pilot did say that he hadn’t).
And RBMK reactors don’t explode
This doesn’t make a lot of sense. A plane without running engines doesn’t just drop out of the sky at the rate described in the article. It would have continued to descend without thrust but at a much slower rate.
Not disagreeing that the switches weren’t cut off but there must be more to the story than that.
Between this and that fireworks factory, China isnt having a great week.
