Comment by blincoln

This is one of the first scenarios that came to mind for me as well.

i.e. hypothetically, no one flipped the switches to cutoff initially, but a glitch in a computer component caused the same effect, including some indication (a status light?) that the switches were in cutoff state. One of the pilots saw the indication, and asked the other. The other (truthfully) said they hadn't. Ten seconds of confusion later, one of them flipped the switches off and back on to reset the state to what it should have been.

That assumes that the switches are part of a fly-by-wire system, of course. I am not an aircraft engineer, so maybe that's not a safe assumption. But if they're fly-by-wire, seems like there might not be a way to know for sure without cockpit video, because the logging system might only log an event when the switches cause the state to change from what the computer thinks the current state is, not necessarily when the switches change to the state the computer thinks they're already in.

Someone bumping the switches accidentally seems worthy of investigation as well, given the potential for an "Oops! No locking feature! Our bad!" scenario on the part of Boeing that's mentioned in the BBC article.