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Comment by ummonk | Hacker News Reader

Yeah and the other pilot flipped the switches back on and one of the engines started spooling up but it was too late.

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.

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> post-flight muscle memory (of shutting off the engines) kicked in

Possible, and if so it is too early to conclude it was murder-suicide.

The report shows 0 flight hours during the prior 24 hours for both pilots, and 7 hours and 6 hours each for the previous 7 days. It seems they were both fresh pilots for this flight.

that doesn’t tell us they were fresh. Only that they hadn’t flown. They could’ve slept 0 hours before or any number of things.

Sure, and aliens could also be involved.

However, the only relevant evidence that exists suggests they had enough rest. You don't build verdicts on suppositions, you build them on proven facts.

This does not guarantee you will reach the truth, but it's miles better than admitting every baseless hypothesis that comes up.

This is preliminary report. They will look deeper into this.

Don't sentence people on unfinished investigations. This is why most trials are not public, because of people like you.

I'm glad you read my other comment [1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44539508

> because of people like you

No. Bad.

Aren't you the one building on suppositions? We know that they don't have flight hours. We cannot conclude what condition they were in aside from that.

to jump from "they could be tired or hungover" to "yeah or aliens" is very dishonest. Especially for a very fresh matter where we know very little, all our assumptions are just that, and nothing we writes has any bearing on anything.

0.1% of airline pilots fly intoxicated, and probably many more fly hangover which is an undetectable condition.

There is speculation that in the Air France flight 447 that crashed into the ocean en route to Paris, one or the pilots only had 1h of rest because of partying the night before. Of course it’s all speculative, and however unlikely it is, eventually it’s bound to happen that we get pilots with poor mental clarity in charge of large Boeings with hundreds of lives on board. Unfortunately it only takes one lapse of judgement to compromise the flight profile of a large airliner, even if corrected after a few seconds.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2014/11/06/vanity-fair-the-h...

At some point I think we need to accept more control from automation. The model where ultimate authority reverts to a single input is a cop out. That could be pilot input, sensor input or even direction from ATC. They will all provide false data on occasions. When that data contradicts 99% of the other data then the safest option is to ignore it. And that doesn't just mean with compromised humans but with normal human weakness. Fully understanding the aircraft, its state, its systems and the minds of its crew is impossible.

In this case I wonder if the fuel cut off switches could be replaced by buttons for particular situations. Have an engine fire button or a shut down whilst on the ground button. Let the pilot provide input on state and let the automation decide what to do with that. Obviously this is not a solution to suicidal or murderous behaviour. But it could be a solution to all the low probability edge cases.

> Murder-suicide looks like the likely conclusion

But why cutoff the fuel instead of flying into terrain? It's such a passive action

I imagine it would be more difficult to fly into terrain without a cooperative co pilot than cutting the fuel just after take off.

For whatever reason, the Egypt Air 990 pilot initiated his murder-suicide by pulling the thrust to idle and then flipping the fuel cutoff switches.

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