And this can't possibly be all the audio if the other pilot noticed the switch position, I would expect a lot more cussing and struggle.
So they didn't notice the switch position? The switch was in the right position but not really? Is this a rarely used switch that one might not look at (or know where to look) during regular use?
10 seconds between OFF and ON.
It only takes a few seconds to completely screw everyone, but a bit longer for the consequences to occur.
So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally, they need to be unlocked first by pulling them out.
> In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.
And both pilots deny doing it.
It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
> As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC.
Damn. That's pretty quick to diagnose and take action.
Boeing's probably gonna have a big sigh of relief over this one.
The 787 is 15 years old, and this particular plane was 10 years old. It always seemed unlikely to be a major, new issue. My money was actually on maintenance.
Is it possible it could have been an accident or a mistake by one of the pilots? How intention-proofed are engine cutoffs?
I'd liken it to turning off the ignition by turning the key while driving your car. Possibly something that could happen if you're really fatigued, but requires quite a mental lapse.
You can do them both with one hand.
08:08:35 Vr
08:08:39 Liftoff
08:08:42 Engine 1 cut-off
08:08:42 Engine 2 cut-off
08:08:47 minimum idel speed reached
?? One pilot to other: why cut-off. Other: Did not do it
08:08:52 Engine 1 run
08:08:52 Engine 2 run
1 second to switch them both off and then 4 seconds to switch them both on. No one admitted to switch them off. They are probably going with fine comb over the audio and also the remains of the chared switches.
Looks like the engines react very quickly to cut-off so it is not clear whether the question about the cut-off is prompted by a glance to the switches or the feel of the airplane.
The big question is whether the switches were moved or something made it seem as if the switches were moved.
That said Boeing could take a page out of the Garmin GI275. When power is removed it pops up a "60s to shutdown dialog" that you can cancel. Even if you accidentally press SHUTDOWN it only switches to a 10s countdown with a "CANCEL" button.
They could insert a delay if weight on wheels is off. First engine can shutdown when commanded but second engine goes on 60s delay with EICAS warning countdown. Or just always insert a delay unless the fire handle is pulled.
Still... that has its own set of risks and failure modes to consider.
You don't have to like that culture and you also don't have to participate in it. Making a throwaway account to complain about it is not eusocial behaviour, however. If you know something to be wrong with someone else's reasoning, the expected response is to highlight the flaw.
well hold your horses there... from the FAA in their 2019 report linked above:
> The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to supply or cutoff fuel to the engines. The fuel control switch has a locking feature to prevent inadvertent operation that could result in unintended switch movement between the fuel supply and fuel cutoff positions. In order to move the switch from one position to the other under the condition where the locking feature is engaged, it is necessary for the pilot to lift the switch up while transitioning the switch position. If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown. Boeing informed the FAA that the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar on various Boeing airplane models. The table below identifies the affected airplane models and related part numbers (P/Ns) of the fuel control switch, which is manufactured by Honeywell.
> If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown
My preliminary idea is a "fuel bladder" for take-off that inflates with enough fuel to get the plane to a recoverable altitude, maybe a few thousand feet?
Or maybe a design that prevents both switches being off (flip flop?) for X minutes after wheel weight is removed?
Again, it’s probably pointless but it’s an interesting thought exercise.
Suicidal pilots are apparently more common than we’d want.
Both of these extremely-experienced pilots say that there was near zero chance that the fuel switches were unintentionally moved. They were switched off within one second of each other, which rules out most failure scenarios.
If it was an issue with the switches, we also would have seen an air worthiness directive being issued. But they didn’t, because this was a mass murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Flight_...
Edit: It also seems like the engine cutoff is immediate after the toggle. I wonder if a built in delay would make sense for safety.
And with how low and slow they were during takeoff, those would have been going off almost instantly.
(Presumably delaying the amount of time before a raging engine fire stops receiving fuel would also have an impact on safety?)
Murder-suicide looks like the likely conclusion, given that flipping the cutoff switches requires a very deliberate action. That said, it's not entirely impossible that due to stress or fatigue the pilot had some kind of mental lapse and post-flight muscle memory (of shutting off the engines) kicked in when the aircraft lifted off.
Possible, and if so it is too early to conclude it was murder-suicide.
See also: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/dgca-slaps-80-lakh-fi...
The conversation would suggest that the switches were in CUTOFF position, but there is also a display that summarizes the engine status.
There is no conversation that mentions flipping the switch to RUN again.
EDIT: Why is there no Cockpit Video Recorder? The days of limited storage are over.
Pilots unions are dead against it.
Just allow cockpit video recorders, and if they're ever used for anything, the pilots (or their heirs) get $250k in cash.
This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction
It’s worth noting that Premeditation or “intention” doesn’t have to factor into this.
Studies of survivors of impulse suicides (jumping off of bridges etc) indicate that many of them report having no previous suicidal ideation, no intention or plan to commit suicide, and in many cases no reported depression or difficulties that might encourage suicide.
Dark impulses exist and they don’t always get caught in time by the supervisory conscious process. Most people have experienced this in its more innocuous forms, the call of the void and whatnot, but many have also been witness to thoughtless destructive acts that defy reason and leave the perpetrator confused and in denial.
How so? It is just as likely to be an intermitted electronic malfunction.
I mean, it's not impossible, but it sure the hell is improbable.
Or more precisely, the signals which come from them were found to behave as such.
Without any audible record of turning the switches off, I wouldn't blame the pilots without first checking the wiring and switches themselves for faults. This reminds me of the glitches caused by tin whiskers.
In this case, it may be a moot distinction, particularly if no physical evidence of fault or tampering has been discovered in investigation. But, in theory, very important - there's a lot of potential grey-area between the two statements.
The proximity of the incident to the ground may also increase the possible attack vectors for simple remote triggers.
I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered by hydrazine that can spool up in about a second.
- There is no chance that the fuel switches were turned off by accident.
- They were off for about five seconds. One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
- They were flipped back on five seconds later. So, ten seconds of off time total.
- It takes a long time for jet engines to spool up; it’s not like a propeller, where the thrust comes back instantly. Ten seconds at 600ft was a death sentence.
- This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
So the big question is, who was flying? The report doesn’t say. (EDIT: actually, the report says the co-pilot was the pilot flying; thanks for the correction.)
In the cockpit, one person is designated “pilot flying” and the other “pilot monitoring.” During takeoff, the pilot flying is completely focused on takeoff. This would be the perfect opportunity to betray your colleague as the pilot monitoring.
- The younger of the two was pilot flying. That means the older person was pilot monitoring.
- This person was also a few flights away from retirement.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/SE0BetkXsLg?si=LPss_su3PVTAqGCO
(They’re experienced pilots who are quite certain the switches were moved intentionally, but they carefully go out of their way not to label it as an act of malice. But, as one of them say, “maybe it was the brain fart of the century” — but the implication is, probably not.)
One of the pilots singlehandedly slaughtered ~300 people. You can believe what you’d like at this stage, but personally, I’d put money on it being the older of the two.
And, it's _two_ switches.
I take your point that we should always be suspicious of complicated, digital buses, and this is not the final report, so there’s still plenty of time to uncover weirdness. However, if the flight date reporter shows the switch being thrown, and then a few milliseconds later, shows the valve starting to close, and the same sequence happening shortly there after on the second switch and valve, I feel this would really limit the likelihood of any digital shenanigans.
This implies intent.
> One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
To me this reads like an unintentional error with colossol implications.
Are you suggesting there was malicious intent and then a delibrately crafted denial by the perpetrator?
Pilots are drilled from day one that the fuel switches are sacred. After a few accidents where one engine failed and the pilot accidentally turned off the remaining functional engine, the training was overhauled so that it would be impossible for it to be an easy action done by mistake. One pilot is required to ask the other for confirmation before toggling the switch, I believe. It wouldn’t be something you’d do from muscle memory.
It easy to say that when you know there's likely no way to prove or disprove whether it as an accident or not. Unless a pilot left a note stating his future intentions, there's no way to determine their state of mind.
If there was no mechanical failure, the only remaining possibility is deliberate action. And if it was mechanical failure, we’d see an emergency air worthiness directive being issued, which we haven’t.
Honestly I think the chances are good that you're right, but the way you're presenting it as absolutely certain strikes me as overconfident, borderline arrogant.
Also, what's with the whole "staking your reputation" thing? What reputation? Are you some kind of famous journalist? Is there some reason we should care about you "covering live news" ? Serious questions -- I personally have no idea who you are.
I also don't recognize this guy's name, but I do find it ironic that his profile is possibly the most well-linked to a other identities I've ever seen on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sillysaurusx
It’s mostly a very public "If I’m wrong, I won’t ever do this again." I’ve been writing informative HN comments since 2008 on various accounts. It’s a big deal to me not to spread misinformation or be mistaken in a situation like this.
The victims also deserve to be acknowledged. At this point the overwhelming body of evidence points to a deliberate act. Pilots are trained never to touch the fuel switches in flight, and (I believe) there is a verbal confirmation required before toggling. This captain had over 8,000 hours.
The reason I’m so confident is because I trust the system. It’s designed so that if either of the two pilots do anything, they verbally call it out, e.g. "gear up." A callout like that followed by fuel switch cutoff would indicate it was accidental. But as far as I know, there was no callout.
The pilot flying is also the one who asks for gear up and such. It’s the job do the pilot monitoring to perform those actions.
Suppose it was accidental. That would mean the pilot flying was fiddling with switches instead of flying; that’s against SOP. Or it would mean the pilot monitoring was performing uncommanded actions, which is also against SOP. It’s not something that happens on a whim. Both are contradictions, hence, no accident.
As for being overconfident or arrogant, what matters to me is accuracy, and passing along that accuracy. No one seemed to be willing to publicly call this a malicious action, so I did. If I’m wrong, you can be sure I’ll feel terrible for weeks, post an apology in the thread that shows I was wrong, and then bow out in disgrace, never to cover news again.
People here did the same thing when the common belief was that there was a non-zero chance of nuclear war. I was one of the few voices in that thread saying absolutely not, stop stressing yourself out for no reason.
I’m simply one voice of many. As always, it’s up to the reader to decide what to believe.
Then why not either wait until there's more information or temper your remarks by acknowledging there's still ambiguity? That would directly hedge against spreading misinformation, whereas staking your reputation on it and then shutting up if you're wrong only works after the misinformation has spread and doesn't seem very productive.
I think the right response to realizing you've spread misinformation (in the event that you turn out to be mistaken [I think it's 60-40 in favor of deliberate]) is to temper your statements and rededicate yourself to checking the facts, not removing yourself from the discussion altogether. And if you were keeping your mouth shut, wouldn't you continue to see discussions you could meaningfully contribute to, and after a while wouldn't you wonder whether anyone was really benefitting from your silence?
Let history be my judge.
I'm also interested in the earlier switch defects where the switches were installed with the locking mechanism disengaged on some 737s and inspection was advised for 787, but the incident aircraft was not inspected.
The airworthiness directive for that [1] indicates switches with locking disengaged should be replaced, but I wonder if it's possible to reingage the locking somehow, which could result in a situation where the locking wasn't engaged, the switches changed inadverdently and then when restored the run position the lock was engaged... that's a big reach, of course.
All that said, assuming the switch was working as designed, there's a semantic argument around deliberate and intentional. If the switch requires specific action, it's fair to call it deliberate action; but if the switcher thought they were activating a different switch, it's not murder.
Either way, there's no sense rushing to a conclusion of murder. Assuming one of the pilots activated the switch, they have already died and they are beyond the effects of human judgement; so we may as well wait for further information.
[1] https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/NM-18-33.pdf/SIB_NM-18-33_1
It's still quite possible that it's a "performed the wrong muscle memory at the worst possible time" accident.
This is an extremely low probability mintake, but anyone who thinks such a mistake is impossible doesn't know anything about human factors.
Unlikely yes, but that just means low probability. There are thousands of flights per day, so it's just a matter of time.
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Why wouldn’t this qualify as a murder-suicide, assuming your theory is correct?
It feels qualitatively different than someone pointing a gun at someone else and then themselves, which is usually what pops to mind when you hear “murder-suicide”.
You’re correct though, it qualifies.
The report says the black box reports the fuel cutoff switches being activated. That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them, it just means that the fly-by-wire system reacted to a fuel cutoff event.
"The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cutoff.
In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff.
The other pilot responded that he did not do so."
It does:
1. Those switches have physical interlocks and cannot be manipulated by any computer system.
2. The flight data recorder is measuring the position of the switches; they aren't inferring the position from some system state. There's a "position of this switch" channel.
The switches were physically moved in the cockpit, that's basically ground truth. The question now is who and why.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-787-technical-features-guide...
" Advanced electric controls
The 787 entered service with an improved fly-by-wire flight control system. Rather than mechanical processes, the systems convert flight deck crew inputs into electrical signals. Still, there were additional advancements with the type."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-ma...
787 (Dreamliner) was pushing hard for weight reduction, and it would not surprise me at all if the switch output fed a digital computer input rather than routing directly to the fuel shutoff valves, but I don't have any direct knowledge of this.
If he was trying to do something else, he would have called it out. E.g. an audible “gear up.”
In my view it would be quite hard to move them by accident, and probably not possible to move at once.
It would be interesting to know if the plane has any other switches of the same type, that are routinely activated.
So I can't imagine how it could have been done accidentally.
Even taking intent for granted, to deny suicide in a case like this would be to suppose that the person responsible expected to survive while everyone else died. What could possibly support that conclusion?
not all my passwords are up and to the left, some are down and to the right, but when i type the wrong one into the wrong place, i type it accurately, i'm just not supposed to be typing it.
"time to do that thing i've practiced, reach to the left". shuts two engines off by muscle memory.
The only difference here is that the consequences are death instead of mere head shaking.
Murder needs more proof than just performing the wrong action. Until then we should apply Hanlon's Razor.
Given a long enough span of time, every possible fuck up eventually will happen.
This is obviously an overstatement. Any two regularly performed actions can be confused. Sometimes (when tired or sick or distracted) I've walked into my bathroom intending to shave, but mistakenly brushed my teeth and left. My toothbrush and razor are not similar in function or placement.
The collection of comments on this post remind me it'll just be a brand new set of random guesses until the final report is released. Or worse - the final report reaches no further conclusions and it just has to fade out of interest naturally over time.
The fuel control switches are behind the throttle stalks above the handles to release the engine fire suppression agents. These switches are markedly smaller and have guards on each side protecting them from accidental manipulation. You need to reach behind and twirl your fingers around a bit to reach them. Actuating these switches requires pulling the knob up sufficiently to clear a stop lock before then rotating down. There are two switches that were activated in sequence and in short order.
The pilot monitoring is responsible for raising the gear in response to the pilot flyings' instruction.
I would find it very difficult to believe this was a muscle memory mistake. At the very least, I would want to more evidence supporting such a proposition.
This idea strikes me as even more unlikely than someone shifting their moving vehicle into reverse while intending to activate the window wipers.
https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2025/Preliminary_Report_VT_AN...
The danger of a burning engine is irrelevant if you are heading into terrain.
There may be a good reason to cut fuel to one engine shortly after takeoff.
You could have a system that prevents both switches being thrown, and only in the specific window after takeoff, but you’ve also now added two additional things that can fail.
Eventually, yes. Soon? Maybe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/world/asia/air-india-cras...
Right after takeoff at low altitude is basically the worst place for this to happen. Speed and altitude are low so gliding is going to be a short distance and happen quickly.
If there had been a perfect empty long flat grass field in that location it may have been salvageable, but also right after takeoff the plane usually has a heavy fuel load which makes for a much riskier landing.
Yes of course the plane glided once the engines stopped, producing thrust, just like all planes do. But just like all planes, and all gliders, gliding means trading altitude for velocity - giving up precious height every second in order to maintain flight. At that stage in the flight, they just didn’t have enough to give. If the same thing had happened at 30,000 feet, it would be a non-event. They would glide down a few thousand feet as the engines spool back up and once they return to full power, everything will be back to normal. Or if for some reason, the engines were permanently cooked, you’d have maybe 20 to 30 minutes of glide time so you’ve got a lot of time to look around and find a flat spot. But you just don’t have enough time for all that to happen When you’re a few hundred feet off the ground.
Dudes is extremely lucky or the character from Unbreakable.
rawgabbit•5h ago
lazharichir•4h ago
But there was audio, too, and one pilot asked the other "why did you switch these off" and the second one said "I didn't".
Was there are third one in the jump seat?
rawgabbit•4h ago
fracus•3h ago
zihotki•3h ago