Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of “privacy” reasons. What do you think about it?
Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of “privacy” reasons. What do you think about it?
A camera wouldn’t have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can’t a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
If anything other than an intentional act by ones of the pilots is to blame, then that’s pretty useful. If the switches malfunctioned or there’s a way to actuate them accidentally, that’s a design flaw in the aircraft.
I get what you’re saying, but how many thousands of cycles do you think the 787 has on it for this to be the first time they failed, and for two separate switches to fail seconds apart?
Accident investigators are very good at what they do, and I will be willing to bet they will be able to narrow it down to an actual cause, even without a camera.
I’ll wait for those very good accident investigators to release a conclusion before I speculate too much about how it happened. Maybe they’ll have a conclusive answer based on other evidence, but if they don’t, it’s easy to imagine how a video could have helped.
Blame isn’t necessarily the important thing for the outcome of an investigation. It is important to determine fault for the sake of preventing future failures. Did the crew flip the wrong switch, or did the system change state without the crew doing anything? Is there a training issue, or an overwork issue, or design flaw, or a maintenance problem?
You can’t answer these questions without knowing the sequence of events prior to the failure, and the flight recorder data that shows a system state change might not be enough if you can’t determine how or why that change happened.
My understanding is that we already know that information, we have the technology to know when the switch is moved, not just when the system acts as if the switch is moved.
I can’t imagine the fuel cutoff switches aren’t monitored, and if they aren’t that’s something that should already exist.
Once again, I will point out, and I really hope I’m not jinxing it, but the USA doesn’t have cockpit cameras, and even still has a pretty exceptional safety record.
And I understand blame is not the intent, but pardon me if I don’t believe that information won’t be used against the crew. This pretty much killed single pilot operations, so now the other solution is to put the crews under a magnifying glass until you can find more problems you can use.
You can’t make a case for something without the proof that something happened.
It is my understanding that it is known the switches were moved, not that there was a failure that reproduced the same effect.
Switches can be monitored meaning their position is known and recorded. Further the odds of them both failing, one second apart is almost zero. All signs point towards someone turned them off, and one of the pilots had a history of mental health issues. It’s not a guarantee, but the math seems to be adding up.
So why not have video evidence to be sure?
Pretty easy fix? There might be an emergency checklist somewhere that requires you to shut off engines. Testing the fuel cut off is part of the pre flight, at least for small airplanes. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be for larger airplanes.
Unless you’re type rated in the airframe or work for Boeing, I would refrain from offering simple fixes.
Also radar altitude? Do they not use pitot tubes for altitude?
Ohhhhhhh buddy you activated my trap card. I happen to have multiple type ratings, and I still consider myself far from an expert. However I do still hold a CFI so I’m going to try to teach you some stuff!
Every airplane that I’ve been required to have a type rating for has a radar altimeter. A lot of systems already use that information, from auto landings, to caution message inhibits, down to GLD spoilers. Watch any “landing an airliner” YouTube videos, I feel pretty safe in saying generally you will hear an audible “50, 40, 30, 20, 10”, that information is usually derived from the radar altimeter.
While you are correct, there are emergency checklists that do require engine shutdowns, there are very few that would require that to be done weight off wheels and under 1000ft AGL. Off the top of my head, the ditching (landing in water) checklist would, but that could be tied to a ditching switch, if equipped, which since I don’t have a 787 type, I don’t know if it does, but I would guess it probably does.
Seeing as you know what a pitot tube is I’m going to assume you at least have some interest in flying. The pitot tube is used for airspeed, what you’re probably thinking of is the other part of that system called the static port. That’s used for things like altitude and vertical speed.
Circling back to my “simple fix”, my current airframe has triple redundant hydraulics with dual redundant pumps for each. So for something that has that much redundancy, don’t you think something as critical as an engine should require more than one switch to shutdown, at least at an altitude of high vulnerability? Just food for thought.
Lmao didn’t know we were playing yugioh, but I will defer to the CFI over my checks credentials former student pilot knowledge.
Pitot tubes measure a plane’s airspeed. It’s static ports that measure barometric pressure. radar altitude directly measures the distance between the ground and the plane using radio waves is more useful on final approach
It doesn’t prevent anything in the moment. It serves as an investigation tool and learning tool after the fact. And that is the real prevention tool. We don’t have to rely on cockpit narration to know more about what’s going on beyond the instrumentation and controls.
What’s to learn? From this incident specifically.
That a pilot with a history of mental health issues most likely did it? What does that teach us? And what are we going to do about it?
Anything shy of treating it as a disability and retiring the pilot with full pay until their retirement age will result in people still hiding rather than looking for help when they need it.
The USA doesn’t have cockpit cameras and has a pretty exceptional safety record, so I’m not sure what anyone is hoping to achieve other than blame someone, which is entirely contradictory to safety.