More disinformation by Indian media on Air India B787 crash
Media in India have been spreading a lot of disinformation on the cause of the crash of Air India flight AI171. Several former pilots made statements which are incorrect.
Another example is this article pubished by The Federal. This digital media has aroud 10 million page views per month. The title of the article is: AI-171 crash triggered by fuel switches or engine failure?
Journalists in India believe that a possibility is the engines stopped and in response the pilots set the fuel control switches to CUTOFF to reset the logic controllingThe a the engines.
This is totally nonsense.
The story written by Rachel Chitra is based on her believe that a faulty sensor might have caused both engines to fail. However the preliminary report does not mention any issue with the engines. The speed of the aircraft after liftoff was normal. Three seconds later both fuel control switches ‘ transitioned’ from RUN to CUTOFF position. There is nothing in the report which says the crew had any reason to set both engines to CUTOFF. There is a procedure to follow before engines are cutoff. Both pilots need to confirm which engine has failed and needs to stopped by cutting the fuel supply.
It a pure disinformation what Rachel Chitra writes.
The part below is also utter nonsense. The Boeing 787 has two EAFR’s. One located in the front, the other in the back of the aircraft. Both record the data (the Flight Data Recorder) and the sounds in the cockpit (the Voice Data Recorder). So the FADEC data is on the FDR. The transcript of the CVR was not released. Just two conversations. The digital trail is not incomplete.
The next lines in the article are plain wrong as well. The ANA B787 did not make an emergency landing. And not one engine but both engines suffered an uncommanded engine shutdown. Also the registration mentioned is incorrect. The involved aircraft was JA825A. Last but not least this incident happened in 2019.
The 2013 incident mentioned below with JA804A was a battery issue.
A few lines later more nonsense. The SAIB was because on some B737 aircraft the locking of the switch did not work. There is not a single issue found on the Boeing 787. See this article for all the details on this B737 issue.
This statement is also nonsense. Video’s show it is perfectly possible to set both switches to CUTOFF within 1 second. Mind the sampling rate is such that the time between two switches set could be 1.99 seconds as well. It does not matter. See this video (source X)
