Comment by labcomputer
20 hours ago
> I don't know why online communities have been so quick to gravitate towards the murder/suicide theory.
Because the hardware failure theories seem preposterously far-fetched and require an unnecessary multiplication of deities.
Your ghost in the machine needs to be “just so” so that it can cause both switches to be read in “cutoff” nearly simultaneously. Then, 10 seconds later one of the switches needs to be read in “run”, then 4 seconds after that the second one needs to read “run”. You also need to explain why there have been zero single engine failures of this type before this double failure.
The ghost also needs to explain why one pilot asked the other “why did you cutoff?” instead of something like “what happened to the engines?” (which is the more natural response, unless you already know the switches are in cutoff).
There's also maintenance lapses, faulty repairs, defective parts, and as far as software goes I can think of n number reasons how a ghost can manifest itself inside program logic. This is a new gen plane that relies more on software than any other before, and has in fact seen a couple of incidents with loss of thrust, both related to software. I think it's more prudent to be asking hard questions around these than to outright dismiss it as an open and shut case. Besides, the murder/suicide angle is the least interesting outcome. Because there's nothing you can do after that, other than to just move on.
There's also the timing. Maybe there's something specific about takeoff that makes it more likely for the failure to occur. However, assuming there's not, then the odds of this occuring at takeoff (the worst possible time) instead of any other time are extremely low. Takeoff accounts for a tiny percent of the plane's operation.
As explained in the text, take off loads aka g force from the plane rotating. That's the feeling that you get when the plane takes off and it pushes you into your seat.
I personally don't buy it. Why then did the switches just work after being toggled. Why did the switches go to shutoff one after the other. Why did the pilot question why the other pilot set it to shutoff? Then there's the catastrophic nature of the timing, 10 seconds earlier and they would have skidded off the runway. 10 seconds later, the engines would've relit and regained enough thrust. If there's one thing pilots are experts in, it's what to do to get yourself killed in your airframe of choice. This was calculated down to the second.
Something else that's going on, there's a bot network alive and well on twitter blaiming boeing and all things under the sun except pilot mass murder. Yet occams razor, a mentally ill pilot shut off the fuel at the right time to doom the aircraft seems tragically possible.