Air India 787 Crashes in Western India

Rick A said:
The Captain reportedly had some personal life altering family issues occurring at the time of the crash...

www.the-sun.com

Air India pilot's haunting plea as he left home on day of deadly crash revealed

AIR India’s captain reportedly made a haunting plea as he left home on the day of the deadly crash. Sumeet Sabharwal gave an eerie message to a security guard at his Mumbai apartment complex …
www.the-sun.com www.the-sun.com
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Suicidal folks tend to be eerily concrete about things. It is fairly common for family members to report final interactions like, "honey, Fido is out of food, can you make sure he gets the lamb-and-rice formula?" Or, "I might not make it home in time tonight, so make sure Sally gets her math assignment done before she goes to bed. She's been having trouble with the times tables."

The Captain of this flight is reported to have asked the doorman at his residence to "please, take care of papa, I will be back soon." That could be significant *if* it was not a typical way the Captain would greet his building's doorman.

The Captain seemed to have a plan to retire early to take care of his father. That would argue against suicidal ideation. Wanting to be around for a dependent is considered a protective factor against active suicidality. On the other hand, was his "early retirement plan" to crash his airliner and make it look like an accident so that dad would get an insurance or lawsuit payout?

I'm still not convinced this was an intentional heinous act. However, if it was, the "get a payout for dad's care" hypothesis would explain both the core motive, as well as the motive to try to make it look like a mechanical failure or an accident.
 
traumamed said:
On the other hand, was his "early retirement plan" to crash his airliner and make it look like an accident so that dad would get an insurance or lawsuit payout?

I'm still not convinced this was an intentional heinous act. However, if it was, the "get a payout for dad's care" hypothesis would explain both the core motive, as well as the motive to try to make it look like a mechanical failure or an accident.
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I'm not entirely convinced either (to your second point), but your first point above was my thought too. I would have done just about anything for my dad too, though I don't feel like killing myself to get him money would have been one. I can't imagine a world where his life would have been better having to deal with my death. Maybe the situation for his dad was really dire? I dunno. I imagine Air India pilots aren't paid particularly well, compared to us in the US 121 world, so maybe money was really tight and he thought there wasn't another option. Maybe I'm just self centered, and can't imagine a situation where dying to give my dad a few more years of money would make sense. Maybe this hypothetical scenario centers more on other close family members who aren't the dad?
 
35 AoA said:
I'm not entirely convinced either (to your second point), but your first point above was my thought too. I would have done just about anything for my dad too, though I don't feel like killing myself to get him money would have been one. I can't imagine a world where his life would have been better having to deal with my death. Maybe the situation for his dad was really dire? I dunno. I imagine Air India pilots aren't paid particularly well, compared to us in the US 121 world, so maybe money was really tight and he thought there wasn't another option. Maybe I'm just self centered, and can't imagine a situation where dying to give my dad a few more years of money would make sense. Maybe this hypothetical scenario centers more on other close family members who aren't the dad?
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You are not going to use logic to understand a suicidal person.
 
Ed Haywood said:
You are not going to use logic to understand a suicidal person.
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That depends upon what made them become suicidal. An interesting, if disturbing, fact about patients experiencing a severe depressive episode: their insights into their own character and life situation are generally more objectively correct than an average person's. People not experiencing depression tend to have a more inflated sense of self and personal situation than a bystander would rate them as having. A lot of my psychiatry from med school and residency is hopelessly buried in the cobwebs, but the psychiatrist who gave the talk about that little nugget has always stuck with me.

Edited to add: A person does not necessarily have to be depressed to be suicidal, and a non-depressed suicidal person usually has a tangible motive aside from simply not wanting to live anymore.
 
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The root cause here may be cultural. There are many religions practiced in India, some of which believe in reincarnation.

The “helping Dad” hypothesis may have been aided by the thought of starting your own life over, for a good cause.

This is clearly pure speculation on my part….

-Skip
 
Piperonca said:
Same vote as @Ed Haywood. Can’t be addressed by any common standard of logic.
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Everyone who is throwing their hands up in the air and saying "can't be understood," "you're not going to use logic here," etc sure sounds a lot like the hazardous attitude of resignation. Fortunately, actual air accident investigators tend to have a bit more tenacity.

There are constantly posts on here from people who want to see mental health issues addressed differently on the aeromedical side. News flash: settling on a "this stuff is beyond reasonable comprehension" conclusion isn't going to help your case.
 
Ed Haywood said:
You are not going to use logic to understand a suicidal person.
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No, but we can use logic to evaluate probabilities. What percentage of people who say, "I'll be back soon," mean, "I'll be back soon," vs. the percentage of people who say, "I'll be back soon," who mean, "I'm going to kill myself"? I'm certain the former is more probable than the later, but is it 1,000:1 or 100,000:1 or 1,000,000:1?
 
Ed Haywood said:
You are not going to use logic to understand a suicidal person.
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I understand what you are saying and appreciate it coming from you and ask seriously, what else do we have to use if logic can't combat this?
 
traumamed said:
actual air accident investigators tend to have a bit more tenacity.
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I was one of them actual air accident investigators for few years, for an Airmobile Division. No medical degree, but that didn't stop me from tenaciously gathering every scrap of relevant data and material that existed and working diligently with the board to produce a factual report. Flight surgeon members always participated. That system worked as intended as long as I recall, although I've heard that in recent years the Army has restricted access to the accident reports.

Wondering if we may be having an apples/oranges conversation. Predicting individual behavior through metrics and probability analysis? That would be some useful stuff indeed.

"In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the fictional science of psychohistory is employed to predict the future behavior of large groups of people, societies, and civilizations. This "mathematics of sociology" cannot predict the behavior of individuals, but relies on statistical laws of mass action to anticipate the actions of vast populations" (Google AI).

Science is a wonderful thing, and seems to already be surpassing science fiction. A higher (mathematical) confidence screening process for flight crews mental health/suicidal ideation would be great.

At the personal level, suicide is an inexplicable tragedy. Some of us have been very close to that and all I can tell you from my humble point of view is that it is not easy to fathom or to cope with.
 
Ed Haywood said:
I don't know. But I do believe that expecting the mindset of a suicidal person to make sense is unlikely to result in valid conclusions.
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I disagree. It wasn't that hard to understand the mindset of the 9/11 hijackers (hated Americans), or Auburn Calloway of FedEx 705 (financial and revenge), or Gameel Al-Batouti of EgyptAir 990 (revenge), or Andreas Lubitz of GermanWings 9525 (active severe depressive episode with psychotic features exacerbated by recent initiation on escitalopram).
 
There are also evil people in this world…I realized and confirmed it personally the first time I walked through a freshly uncovered mass grave site…who knows…but it’s always a real possibility and how I look at things…
 
3393RP said:
Mary Schiavo is less qualified to comment on an aviation mishap than an Inughuit narwhal hunter living on the ice covered evirons of North Greenland.
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I saw that whackadoodle's wild claims on Indian news today. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people in the world's most populous country that would rather believe that somehow "software" turned those switches off than listen to people who actually know better.
 
Piperonca said:
Wondering if we may be having an apples/oranges conversation. Predicting individual behavior through metrics and probability analysis? That would be some useful stuff indeed.

"In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the fictional science of psychohistory is employed to predict the future behavior of large groups of people, societies, and civilizations. This "mathematics of sociology" cannot predict the behavior of individuals, but relies on statistical laws of mass action to anticipate the actions of vast populations" (Google AI).

Science is a wonderful thing, and seems to already be surpassing science fiction. A higher (mathematical) confidence screening process for flight crews mental health/suicidal ideation would be great.
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We might be. It would be nice to gain a better understanding of psychiatric emergencies and their risk factors. This could both increase aviation safety and potentially reduce the career risk to pilots with mental health diagnoses that are not dangerous.
Piperonca said:
At the personal level, suicide is an inexplicable tragedy. Some of us have been very close to that and all I can tell you from my humble point of view is that it is not easy to fathom or to cope with.
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I do think as a medical professional that suicidal ideation and behavior can often be explained, and effective treatments for depressed and suicidal people exist. I am not a psychiatrist, but I work in an inpatient and emergency setting where we see people having psychiatric crises all the time. I have to temporarily take people's freedom away on a regular basis by placing them on medicolegal involuntary psychiatric holds. There is an intangible that we do not have good scientific understanding of yet. If you look at me as a patient and tell me you plan to kill yourself, I am placing you on a psych hold 99.9% of the time, because it's my license if I let you leave and you follow through. However, I have gotten to a point where I internally feel pretty confident that I can differentiate between someone who means business vs when they are just blowing smoke or crying out for help/attention. Ask me to explain how I can sense that in some quantifiable objective manner and I couldn't.

Also, we need to be careful here to recognize that there are people who become suicidal due to mental illness, and there are people who are acting in a premeditated or even an impulsive criminal manner and just happen to commit suicide as a consequence they accept as part of their crime. The two do not necessarily overlap. Reference 9/11.
 
traumamed said:
There is an intangible that we do not have good scientific understanding of yet.
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traumamed said:
Ask me to explain how I can sense that in some quantifiable objective manner and I couldn't.
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traumamed said:
Also, we need to be careful here to recognize that there are people who become suicidal due to mental illness,
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I think rather than apples to oranges, we are saying the same exact thing. I think there was just a misunderstanding. I call all of those things logic/lacking logic.

What goes through the mind of a person with mental illness (and caveat that there is a range) may not be able to be predicted and would have some inherent randomness.

And the field of psychiatry is still green relative to something like internal medicine.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I think rather than apples to oranges, we are saying the same exact thing. I think there was just a misunderstanding. I call all of those things logic/lacking logic.

What goes through the mind of a person with mental illness (and caveat that there is a range) may not be able to be predicted and would have some inherent randomness.
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We might be. This has gone further down a psychiatry rabbit hole than I think any of us intended. My main point as it relates to this mishap is that there is suicide due to mental illness, and there is suicide as a means to a criminal end. The latter does not imply mental illness at all. If this does end up being ruled an intentional act, then it is not enough - maybe not even accurate at all - to say the captain was mentally ill. This might have been a heinous act of violence as a means to improve his family's finances/get better care for his father.

Edited to add: And I agree 100% that on an emotional and empathic level as a human being, it is beyond all comprehension how someone could rationalize that it is okay to murder 260 people over money.
 
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People wanting to have a suicide cause this early in the investigation tell us more about themselves than the actual facts.
 
skyking3286 said:
People wanting to have a suicide cause this early in the investigation tell us more about themselves than the actual facts.
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Actual facts? I believe they have the actual facts figured out by now. Someone shut the engines down. What more do you want?
 
traumamed said:
And I agree 100% that on an emotional and empathic level as a human being, it is beyond all comprehension how someone could rationalize that it is okay to murder 260 people over money.
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Yes. My career revolves around equipping law enforcement first responders to active killing events (shootings) with protective armor, and I'm very familiar with details of many murderous actions conducted by deranged people murdering innocent people, and the followup investigations that speculate and arrive at the best guesstimate of "why" (as crazy as it may seem).

Speculations are based upon the gathering and interpretation of all information, some of which may be considered insignificant (i.e., the Doorman comment). Yet, they're evaluated and considered in putting a puzzle together. Likely causes at best, but of course we will never know for sure.

Many of the police I've known and have worked with share the same opinion that just because someone conducts an outrageously evil event, killing innocents (that often includes suicide as the ending), does not mean they're stupid. Many times, it's the exact opposite. Seemingly normal, productive and accomplished people do surprise everyone and plan irrational and violent acts for reasons we will never know.

My opinion on the world of murder is basically evil and violence exist as the dark side of humanity. We all can agree to have a love of life, and the hope that love grows to become a greater force than the evil forces that cause hatred, and an ability to kill innocents.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I think rather than apples to oranges, we are saying the same exact thing. I think there was just a misunderstanding. I call all of those things logic/lacking logic.

What goes through the mind of a person with mental illness (and caveat that there is a range) may not be able to be predicted and would have some inherent randomness.

And the field of psychiatry is still green relative to something like internal medicine.
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Psychology would be the pertinent field to study the minds of others. Think of psychiatry as hardware study, and psychology as software study.
 
bonefishpete said:
Actual facts? I believe they have the actual facts figured out by now. Someone shut the engines down. What more do you want?
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You already concluded a long time ago that the FO intentionally crashed the plane. Why are you still bothering with this thread?
 
Lindberg said:
You already concluded a long time ago that the FO intentionally crashed the plane. Why are you still bothering with this thread?
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If it bothers you ignore my posts simple.
At this point it looks like a pilot shut down the engines. What is your conclusion?
 
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bonefishpete said:
If it bothers you ignore my posts simple.
At this point it looks like a pilot shut down the engines. What is your conclusion?
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It doesn't bother me; it's entertaining. And I haven't come to a conclusion because I don't have all the relevant facts. As you seem to now acknowledge, we don't even know for a fact, that a pilot moved the switches.
 
The problem with the line of reasoning "the software malfunctioned and turned off the engines" is that one would assume that the data recorder would record whether or not there was a manual, i.e. pilot driven, shutdown, or a software driven shutdown. Subsequently, the flight data recorder can't distinguish between the two.

If that were the case, the report would likely have made pains to say, the fuel was cutoff to both engines, but we can't determine whether it was a software initiated shutdown or a manual one from the cockpit switches. The report does not say that. It says, "the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec"

I'm sure the report authors know exactly the implications of the wording.

Of course if you're not bound by the data within the recorders, and enjoy conspiracy theories, then you can spin this narrative in any number of directions...
 
Does the FDR have the ability to make a record of switch position? If yes, then the investigative team could indeed write what they wrote. I don't know the software of the 787 FDR, I don't know if it records, or has the granularity to inscribe a data marker into the recording, for physical switch position.

I suppose it would be probable that it could, given it is my understanding the FDR has the ability to record throttle position, flap handle vs actual flap position as separate data point, etc.

Cockpit video would shed light into a lot of these sequences.
 
If there was a software-driven cutoff I would imagine they would cut off simultaneously, not 1 second apart, and that a pilot wouldn't be able to turn them back on easily. Considering the wording of the preliminary, there doesn't seem to be any doubt that the actual switches were physically moved.
 
Mark K said:
The problem with the line of reasoning "the software malfunctioned and turned off the engines" is that one would assume that the data recorder would record whether or not there was a manual, i.e. pilot driven, shutdown, or a software driven shutdown. Subsequently, the flight data recorder can't distinguish between the two.

If that were the case, the report would likely have made pains to say, the fuel was cutoff to both engines, but we can't determine whether it was a software initiated shutdown or a manual one from the cockpit switches. The report does not say that. It says, "the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec"

I'm sure the report authors know exactly the implications of the wording.

Of course if you're not bound by the data within the recorders, and enjoy conspiracy theories, then you can spin this narrative in any number of directions...
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Again, it's rich that folks who not long ago were certain the investigators were going to manipulate or conceal the cause after now excited to jump to conclusions based on the one data point those same investigators have curated for them. How can anyone be "bound by the data within the recorders" when we don't yet know what data is in the recorders?
 
Lindberg said:
Again, it's rich that folks who not long ago were certain the investigators were going to manipulate or conceal the cause after now excited to jump to conclusions based on the one data point those same investigators have curated for them. How can anyone be "bound by the data within the recorders" when we don't yet know what data is in the recorders?
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Well, yes, I am placing a certain amount of trust that the report's phrasing of the switches being flipped off was not an intentional misdirection on the part of the report's authors. But yes, this is trust on my part. I mean, if I were truly suspicious, maybe there was no Air India crash. Maybe it's all a hoax. I mean, after all, I wasn't there...a lot of different creative narratives you can write here...
 
hindsight2020 said:
Does the FDR have the ability to make a record of switch position?
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I'm sure the FDR has the ability to record what the airplane thinks is the position of the switches, based on inputs - it was already reported that the FDR showed both switches cycled off about a second apart, then back on a few seconds later, right?

That said, I can't tell you how many times I've seen systems exhibit oddball failure modes because something thinks a button has been pushed or a switch thrown, based on a faulty sense input. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the systems on that airplane, and whether those switches directly control anything or just provide inputs to a system that then actuates the valves under software control. But while the FDR can no doubt see the electrical signals from the switches, it can't record the actual physical positions. Since the switches were (if I recall correctly) found in the wreckage in the RUN position, I'm awfully tempted to go with the simplest explanation that fits all of the evidence... one of the two pilots intentionally toggled them to down the airplane.

Now the question becomes, which one? Even knowing which pilot asked the other why the hell he just shut off fuel, that doesn't mean much... murderously crazy guy flips both switches, then asks the other guy, "Hey, why'd you just shut the engines off?" Innocent pilot replies - truthfully - "I didn't", then they faceplant into apartments. Or the innocent pilot sees the crazy one do it, asks him why, and the crazy one denies it for various reasons. Or the system sees sense inputs that incorrectly indicate both switches toggled off, dutifully toggles the outputs off, and the pilots are left looking at each other as the engines spool down, each wondering why the other just killed them all. I'm sure the Boeing and NTSB guys can figure out whether that is or is not a possibility. I'd love to see those schematics.

Schrödinger's switches. OK, maybe that's a bad analogy (or maybe not, or maybe it both is and is not). Without video or some other evidence, like a suicide note, I don't think we really can ever know for certain who did what. I suspect there will be a "preponderance of evidence", as they say. The only two people who know for sure are not able to testify.
 
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