Comment by dcreater
2 days ago
Do you know if the mechanical position of the switch guarantees its electronic state without any possibility for hardware malfunction? If no, then you are claiming a person made one of the most grave acts of inhumanity ever.
This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction
The time between the two switches being activated and then them being switched back on after being noticed strongly suggests that they were actually manipulated. Malice looke very likely to me. An investigation into the pilots life may turn something up, I guess.
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.
> The time between the two switches being activated and then them being switched back on after being noticed strongly suggests that they were actually manipulated
How so? It is just as likely to be an intermitted electronic malfunction.
For both switches on seperate systems and wires that are independant.
I mean, it's not impossible, but it sure the hell is improbable.
Murder-suicide has happened on a few occasions. How many times has your malfunction occurred on an aircraft fuel system?
Not precisely the electrical malfunction, but dual engine shutdown has occurred, fortunately after landing:
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/ana-787-engine-shutdown/
Different engine (those are Trents and this was a GEnx), but yeah, that _did_ happen.
That doesn't seem to be a malfunction at all.
There is also audio of the pilots discussing the issue.
And then 10s later the switches magically fixed themselves? The likely not electronically connected switches since that would compromise engine redundancy?
intermittent state switching is absolutely a thing in (poorly designed/manufactured/tested/QC'd) electronics
It is, and one would expect that a single switch failure would be far more probable, so how often have we had switch failure single engine cutoff in the 787?
The other pilot likely flipped them back - but at that point, it was impossible to avoid crashing.
All this rests on whether we have CVR audio of the pilot(s) manipulating the switches.
The rodents were remorseful and fixed the cables in the meantime. /s