“The Timestamps Just DON’T Add Up!” Air India 171 With Captain Steeeve + Boeing Whistleblower
More details are emerging about the devastating Air India crash which killed 260 people last month. Many hoped a 15-page preliminary report would bring closure but instead, it has fuelled ever more speculation. What we know is that, seconds after take-off, both fuel-control switches on the Boeing Dreamliner were abruptly switched off, causing the fully-loaded plane to fall from the air and crash into a hostel for medical students. One pilot is heard asking the other why he moved the fuel controls to “cut off.” The other replies that he didn’t. Last week, Captain Steve Scheibner gave Piers Morgan a fascinating breakdown of why the evidence points to a deliberate act. That prompted two of our next guests to appear alongside Caption Steve; Boeing safety whistleblower Ed Pierson and military aviator & former air accident investigator Captain Kishore Chinta. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: American Financing: Call American Financing today to find out how customers are saving an avg of $800/mo. 866-721-3300 or visit https://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Piers - NMLS 182334, https://nmlsconsumeraccess.org OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code PIERS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fuel Switches Transition Mystery00:09:29
You got to give that other pilot a few seconds to go through the horror and the panic of what's going on.
If the one pilot showed up that day to check out, then he achieved that goal.
I don't want to go there, but it's the only thing that fits.
These leaks that we see, these leaks that we hear about from a U.S. source to a U.S. media source, it pains me to say this, but this is the same playbook we saw after the max.
The Bloomberg report doesn't mention anywhere that those physically those switches moved.
That is what is the key to the entire theory.
This idea that the government agencies are the only ones that should be able to hold these facts in and they'll feed them out to us like breadcrumbs is ridiculous.
They need to put all the facts out there as soon as they get them.
Now, anyone flying on a Boeing Dreamliner right now is thinking, well, hang on, what happened here?
And could that happen to my plane?
Well, more details are emerging about the devastating Air India crash, which killed 260 people last month.
Many hoped a 15-page bloomering report would bring closure.
Instead, it seems to have fueled ever more speculation.
What we know is that seconds after takeoff, both fuel control switches on the Boeing Dreamliner were abruptly switched off, causing the fully loaded plane to fall from the air and crash into a hostel for medical students.
One pilot is heard asking the other why he moved the fuel controls to cut off.
The other replies that he didn't.
We don't know who said what, but attention is focusing on the senior pilot because the younger first officer would have had his hands on the controls.
Well, last week, Captain Steve Scheibner gave us a fascinating breakdown of why the evidence points to a deliberate act that prompted two of our next guests, including a Boeing safety whistleblower, to get in touch with a different interpretation.
All three of them join me now.
So returning to Uncensored is pilot and YouTube commentator, Captain Steve Scheibner, the executive director of the Foundation for Aviation Safety and Boeing whistleblower Ed Pearson, and the former air accident investigator and pilot, Captain Kishore Chinta.
Welcome to all of you to Uncensored and welcome back to you, Captain Steve.
Ed Pearson, let me start with you.
You're a Boeing whistleblower.
You're not as convinced as Captain Steve that what we're looking at here is most likely to be pilot error.
Is that right?
Well, I want to say that it's possible it's pilot error, but I think that we need to look at all the possible system failures that could have occurred.
We need to exhaust that list before we infer or implicate the pilots.
Okay, so let's just go over again.
For viewers who may not have seen my earlier interview with Captain Steve, what exactly do we now know happened here?
Explain the actual sequence of events as we understand them from all the information that's been released.
Yeah, well, I mean, obviously the report says that the pilots had a conversation.
They're not even that specific about what they're talking about.
So one of the real issues I want to just say right up front is there's not a timestamp detailed timeline.
So the information that we have is lacking.
There's no information about what the pilots were looking at, the alarms they were seeing or anything like that.
So it's really an incomplete report.
And we think that's really not fair.
They need to be a lot more thorough.
If it wasn't the fuel control switches being cut off, what else could have caused the plane to nosedive so soon after takeoff?
Well, we have to look at these things called common mode failures, right?
So you could have potentially an electrical short circuit or some sort of arcing, some sort of system failure that could occur.
And these switches and the circuitry, you know, they're in parallel at certain points.
In certain points, they come together.
So the proximity and, you know, it could be potential water leaking.
We've had reports of water leaking into the electronic bays.
There was a federal FA administration report on actual circuitry issues in the circuitry.
So there's a lot of things that need to be examined here systems wise before we, again, jump to the conclusion that this was a pilot make a mistake or even intentional.
Okay, Captain Chin, so what's your view?
Thank you, gentlemen.
Due respects to both the gentlemen who are former military aviators like me.
And hearty welcome to all of you all.
I would like to begin with a quote from the FAA Handbook on Human Factors.
An accident is the final act of a chain of decisions which is made.
What we have from the preliminary report, with due respects to Steve, excellent analysis.
I've gone over a bunch of your videos, but let's just talk about just the facts which are on record on the preliminary report.
That's what we should be focusing on.
I will break it down to you, summarize.
Steve has already done it, but I'm not trying to have an alternate theory over here.
I will just start from the lift off.
At 808, 39 seconds was the lift off.
And three seconds later, it says max speed of 180 knots was achieved, but no altitude is mentioned.
Next event is at 43 seconds.
We'll assume it's 43 seconds because it says after 42, immediately a second later, the fuel control switches was seen to be transitioning from run to cutoff.
Okay, 43 and 44 is when both these events happen transition.
Okay.
At 47, the N2 was below minimum idle and the rat started supplying hydraulics.
It's not mentioned anywhere with a timestamp when the rat deploys.
There's a CCTV footage.
We do not know the CCTV footage timestamp when actually they, at what altitude they see the rat deployed.
If you just go by this sequence of events, we do not see any reason for the rat to deploy.
The rat will deploy.
Steve will agree with me.
We have a gentleman who has technical knowledge on the 737 MAX.
The engines to spool down from max takeoff thrust to below 50% N1 is when the generators will start generating any electrical power is when the rat should be deploying.
If on the ground, Steve mentioned in one of his videos that it takes a finite amount of time for the engines to spool down when you turn, when you get to the gate and you turn off the fuel cutout switches, even if we take that as 30 seconds for this pull down and take it as 10 seconds or more for it to spool down from idle power to less than 50%, the timestamps just don't match up.
And if it took one second to put off both the switches quickly, why did it take four seconds to put them back on?
Even if we say it was a human factor, a deliberate attempt by one of the pilots.
Okay, let's just hypothesize.
I'll be the devil's advocate over here.
Okay, why did just the fuel switches be put off?
If I had an intent of crashing the airplane, I just had to tip the wings at 50 feet and that would be the end of story.
Why are we hypothesizing the mere factor that the preliminary report, it says in the foreword, it is not to apportion blame.
We're doing gross injustice to the pilots who are not there to defend themselves by guest estimating and coming up with theories which are mere assumptions.
Next assumption.
The flight cutoff switches, the APU inlet door opened at 54 seconds up and the whole flight took 32 seconds till the AFR stopped recording.
So practically whatever happened happened in the first 10 seconds from the liftoff.
The timestamp doesn't match up.
As Ed already mentioned, the preliminary report, I wouldn't call it faulty.
They did whatever best they could do in placing all the facts and figures.
That is the purpose of the preliminary report.
At no point of time do they indicate apportioning any blame.
The only thing which I can pick out is the incorrect mention of the CBR transcript.
We do not know at what point of time that exchange happened between both the pilots is paraphrased very conveniently between two events.
So that's where all the conclusions are coming up on, you know, mental health and we're just going way ahead of time on all these theories.
Okay.
Steve, your response to what the two other guests have said.
Well, there's a lot been said so far, and I want to stick with what is written in the preliminary report.
The preliminary report does have a fair amount of detail, and I'll agree there are some things missing.
I think the biggest thing is the people that wrote the report need to get in front of a microphone and answer some questions.
We're trying to glean what we can here based on what they gave us.
However, the only answer that really fits all of the parameters are that the fuel control switches, as they say in the report, transitioned from run to cutoff.
Questioning The Preliminary Report00:10:22
That doesn't happen without human intervention.
And anybody that operates those switches knows that.
They are spring-loaded into position.
They have a detent to hold them there.
They don't vibrate out of position.
That's never happened.
There's no evidence that that took place at all.
We're thinking of some sort of theory where the engines failed and for some reason, some unexplained reason, the pilot or pilots would reach over and turn those fuel control switches to cutoff, wait four seconds to turn them back on to run.
That's not a procedure we're trained in for any situation at all.
If there's a dual engine failure, you go to cutoff and run immediately within a second of each other because you want to get those engines relit.
The rat deployed so quickly because both fuel control switches were placed to cutoff.
You didn't have to wait for the engines to spool down.
Normally on an engine failure, you would wait for the engines to spool down.
If you take both of those switches to cutoff, the air logic knows that the rat needs to deploy and it deploys instantaneously.
So that explains why the rat came out so quickly.
One of the pilots returned the switches back to run and they stayed there.
And so the theory that somehow they vibrated out of position or somehow there was something wrong with them and they ended up in their cutoff position uncommanded is just ridiculous because there's pictures of the fuel control switches in the crash in the run position.
They survived the entire G impact of the crash and the fireball afterwards and didn't budge.
And so they don't just move on their own.
The idea that they somehow vibrated in that position and then everybody was surprised.
The only way you can move those switches is to put a hand on them and move them back and then move them back up.
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What's fascinated many people who are not expert in aircraft is that it would be so easy for a pilot to go rogue and bring down a plane just by switching two switches off.
I was pretty startled to discover that.
I also assumed that if that ever happened in that eventuality, that that's the point of having a co-pilot is that they would move immediately to do something about it, which doesn't seem to have happened here.
How Captain Steve, I mean, I should say that since we last spoke in an interview, by the way, which I think nearly 2 million people have watched.
So there's enormous public appetite for this.
Since we last spoke, the Wall Street Journal did a pretty big, deep dive into this, no pun intended, in which they reported that it was Clive Kunda, who was the co-pilot, who asked the captain why he cut the fuel.
And the explanation for that is that he would have been the one whose hands were on the actual controls taking off as the co-pilot.
So he couldn't have been simultaneously cutting off the fuel.
They also said, well, in fact, you could say that the overall feeling of the Wall Street Journal report was reinforcing your theory there was pilot interference and said there was no evidence of aircraft malfunction or that Boeing was therefore to blame.
I presume you read that report, Captain Steve.
What did you think of the Wall Street Journal report?
And what do you say to people who are just like kind of flabbergasted that it would be that easy for a rogue pilot to do what happened if that's what happened?
Well, it is easy.
The pilots have their hands on the controls all the time.
I think sometimes in a rational mind, like we're trying to approach an irrational act with a rational mind, and it doesn't make any sense.
You know, the objection I've heard is, why didn't the pilot just nose the airplane over?
Well, that certainly would have been one way to do it.
He didn't.
We're again applying a rational theory to an irrational act.
Clearly, somebody turned those fuel control switches to cutoff.
Somebody else, I'm assuming, turned them back on.
That's an assumption on my part.
But it fits with the Wall Street Journal report that one pilot turned them off and the other turned them back on.
You got to give that other pilot a few seconds to go through the horror and the panic of what's going on.
It would be hard to process what you just saw, that somebody else turned the fuel control switches off because you know the implications of that.
You're going to look out in front of you.
You're going to see the ground getting closer.
You're going to try to push the power up.
They got no power.
You reach down, you look at the switches again, you turn them back to run, hoping that those engines relight in enough time to get power to climb out of it.
That never transpires because the whole thing happened so quickly.
It would be horrible for the other pilot if the one pilot showed up that day to check out and that was his goal, then he achieved that goal.
But sadly, it's horrible in the extreme to think about that.
I don't want to go there, but it's the only thing that fits all the checkboxes and all the parameters of all the things that took place on that aircraft in that 60-second flight.
Okay.
Well, I'll come to you in a second, Captain Shazotti.
I know you put your hand up there because I saw, Ed, I saw your facial reactions there suggesting you don't agree with what Captain Steve just said.
I don't.
I don't agree with Captain Steve.
The Wall Street Journal report I found was very, was not very good.
You know, the airplane is incredibly complex, right?
If you ever looked inside the airplane infrastructure, you would see an absolute jungle of electrical, electronic, computer systems.
Switches have been known to, it's called mimicking, switch mimic, which means that something could happen to a circuit that actually could cause an indication that something was moved when in fact the switch wasn't moved.
That's just one example of a systems engineering type issue.
And I'm not an expert in these areas.
One of the things we really need to do is we need to bring in expertise in electronics, that type of technology.
I'm bothered by this because, you know, if we want to stay within the boundaries of the report, then these leaks that we see, these leaks that we hear about from a U.S. source to a U.S. media source, it pains me to say this, but this is the same playbook we saw after the MAX.
We saw Blame the Pilots, FAA Boeing, send out a message saying everything's fine.
In fact, there's information today that the NTSB is withholding about the ET302 crash that they're not sharing with the international parties.
So it's really bothersome.
We need to look at the facts.
And this idea that the government agencies are the only ones that should be able to hold these facts in and they'll feed them out to us like breadcrumbs is ridiculous.
They need to put all the facts out there as soon as they get them.
The only people that are benefiting from delaying putting out all the facts is the parties that have financial interests in mind.
So I feel like we need to do a lot more and not be so quick to look at this report and make assumptions that this was done by the pilots.
And let me ask you, just again, not being as expert as you in this, is there any difference in terms of liability for Boeing if it turns out to be a deliberate act by one of its pilots or if it was a system malfunction that caused the crash?
Are they more or less liable with one or the other?
I think, first of all, we want Boeing to be successful.
It's important to our country and our national security.
But if this turns out to be a system failure, if they go through the process and release the facts, and again, by sharing the facts out to a large audience, to the public, you bring in all that expertise, right?
Instead of trying to do it with a small team.
So I think that there is liability, unfortunately, if there is a system failure, design failure.
It could be a maintenance failure.
I mean, I'm keeping that door open as well.
But right now, there's such, the report is just woefully inadequate.
Right.
But the point I was making is, is there any difference to your knowledge in potential liability, whether it's pilot error or plane error?
In other words, if it actually comes to claims from the families of all those who died, is there a qualitative difference in the amount that could be paid out by Boeing?
I mean, I'm assuming, given that the pilots were Boeing employees, that Boeing would still be liable regardless.
Well, that's a great question.
And honestly, Pierce, I can't answer that.
I'm not an attorney, but my gut reaction is that if there's responsibility on Boeing, if that failure occurred because of Boeing or Boeing employees, then yes, that would probably increase their liability.
Okay, let me bring Captain Chinta back.
You raise your hand to make a point.
What was the point you were going to make?
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Mechanical Failures Or Human Error00:14:56
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To start with, Steve mentions the rat deployed.
Let's assume, based on his assumption that the rat deploys immediately once you put those switches off.
Just by the facts on the preliminary report, those switches were switched off at 43 seconds, okay, 808.43.
The rat starts, the same report says the rat starts.
Can you explain?
Sorry, just to jump in.
Can you explain for viewers who don't understand the term?
What is the rat?
Just explain that again.
Captain Steve did it.
The RAM air turbine is a propeller which deploys once the engine shut down to provide hydraulic and electrical power to the pilots to continue flying the airplane while they attempt to relight of the engines or the aircraft is continued to be flyworthy.
It gives power supply to the engine instrument, I mean the aircraft instruments, as well as hydraulics for flying the airplane.
Okay.
And just to remind people, you are a former...
It takes a finite amount of time for the rat to start developing that power.
If it deployed three seconds before, if we go by the timeline, you know, Steve is mentioning three seconds is too less a time for the rat to start generating power to start supplying hydraulics.
So that's where the theory ends over there.
The assumptions we're making, who said what did the flight control switches actually move?
They use the word transition.
Steve, they use the word transition because the EAFRs do not record the switch movement.
The EAFR records the signal that the switch provides.
The flight control switch provides power to the spar valve switch, which in sequence gives signal to the flight fuel monitoring unit and further to the high-pressure shutoff valve.
And, you know, so Captain Shinsu, let me jump in.
Let me jump in.
Just in simple layman's terms, is it possible that those fuel switches were turned off without human involvement?
Captain Steve.
Exactly.
That's where I'm going to be able to do that.
Captain Steve has extensive, obviously, flying experience.
He does not believe that is possible.
Yeah, I'm coming to that.
I have a background to this.
I spent almost my entire military life in electronic warfare.
I understand EM waves.
And Steve would be good to read FA chief scientist and technical advisor Dave Wollen in December 2002 had put out a paper.
It mentions how electromagnetic interferences affect aircraft systems.
To go on to that, there are so many documented uncommanded faddic inputs for engine shutdowns.
You can take, for instance, the ANA 787 Dreamliner of the same type.
There are Embraer aircraft which have fadded shutdowns.
The military aircraft where uncommanded ejections have happened.
There are military aircraft where engines have shut down.
You know, on a Mirage 2000, one of the most advanced engines, the SNECMA engine, had a faddic shutdown.
So it is not something which you can just rule out out of the window just like that.
So it is technically possible.
And one more point which I would like to make is that the EAFRs, you know, the rare EAFR sustained damage to an extent where it is, you know, twisted and out of shape.
That can only happen.
Metal can only bend when there is an electrical fire.
A fuel fire will not generate enough heat for metal to bend.
Okay, so tell me what, okay.
So tell me, Captain Shindu, what is your best working theory?
Right now about what you think happened.
I wouldn't like to hypothesis, I wouldn't like to make any assumptions, but the AIB, in best course of action, the AIB this is what the AIB should be doing is, as per chapter 2 uh, para 2.2 in the UH Doc, doc 9756, which is the manual of aircraft investigation, they should issue an interim statement with the transcript of the cvr which will debunk all theories on who said what and what.
was the events in terms of the icash warnings uh, once the fuel switches were transitioned to cutoff.
All those aspects will come out once the communications in the cockpit will be clear.
Next thing, it should be a data-driven UH investigation which should investigate all aspects of em interference or the Faddick uh failure or any other electrical supply malfunction or a software glitch in the uh entire uh, uh command system of the Uh Boeing 787 which may have caused uh, these switches.
Okay, and before I go back to everyone saying those fuel switches went to cut off yeah, but the preliminary report doesn't mention anywhere that those physically, those switches moved.
That is what is the key to the entire theory.
Those switches moved, we do not know.
Yes, those shut off the fuel supply which caused the engines to lose power.
Yes, why that happened, we do not know right now.
We should not.
Uh, so you're just to be clear, or make assumptions.
Okay, just to be clear, you're saying that the fuel switch, the fuel supply, could have cut off without the switches being turned off.
Yes, it is a possibility which cannot be ruled out at this stage.
Okay, but also but, but do you also, presumably you can't also rule out human error?
You, you can't definitively say it wasn't pilot absolutely, absolutely that.
I am at no point saying that you can rule out human factors at this stage uh, of the preliminary report.
Okay, we would be unfair to both the pilots or anyone else.
But in terms of human factors which may have led to a cause of this accident okay, it is too preliminary to even, you know, hypothesis or make an assumption of mental health and all.
We'd be just jumping the gun over here.
Okay well, we might, we might be, it might turn out to be true.
Uh, captain Steve, I mean to that point that the, the fuel supply could have been cut off without human engagement.
You, you seem to suggest with your facial expression that you don't believe that would be No, absolutely impossible on that type of fuel control switch.
It's a mechanical switch and it goes from run to cutoff mechanically and it opens a mechanical relay.
There is no electronic component to it except for one that sends a signal to the FEDEC on that particular aircraft so you don't overboost the engines.
It's like a governor, but it's a fail-safe system.
So in other words, that mechanical relay opens up three valves: the spar valve, the fuel management valve, and the high-pressure shutoff valve that all send fuel out to the engine.
It's inconceivable that there's any sort of electronic impulse that could somehow close any one of those valves.
It's a fail-safe system so that that doesn't happen.
In fact, Air India went into the simulator to try to recreate the situation where they lost total electrical failure and somehow the engines failed at the same time.
They couldn't do it because it doesn't, it's not designed that way.
It's a mechanical switch with a mechanical relay.
So any theory about some mysterious electronic signal that got sent to close a valve, it doesn't work that way.
You got to know how the system works with those fuel shutoff valves.
It's designed that way on purpose to avoid any sort of electrical error that might go out.
Now, I agree with Ed.
Boeing's had their problems in the past, and that's absolutely germane to any conversation going forward.
I just don't think it fits here.
Their past woes don't apply here necessarily because those fuel control switches are a very simple mechanism.
They're mechanical.
They have a mechanical relay.
They open up three valves.
The only way to shut off those three valves is to place the fuel control switch to cutoff or pull the fire handle.
Those are the only two ways to do it.
Okay, Ed, do you wanted to say something?
Yeah, those switches are not just mechanical.
If it was strictly mechanical, it would be a metal connection.
It would be a connection between the switch and the actual valve itself.
There's got electrical wiring.
There's things that go from that switch all the way out to the airplane.
I mean, and I'm not an expert in all this, but you just, it's to assume that that is a purely mechanical thing is not accurate.
If you don't mind me, if you don't mind challenging you there, I mean, you keep saying you're not an expert.
I mean, Captain Steve is an expert.
He's done a lot of flying.
He is emphatic.
There is no other way this could have happened.
If you're not an expert in this, how can you be equally emphatic?
It is possible.
As I said, we have to look at all the systems of the airplane, right?
Not just that little switch.
Again, I've worked in a factory.
I saw how these airplanes are manufactured.
I saw employees that were building these planes, and I reported this in the MAX, that we had electrical issues in the factory.
We had issues with testing of our electrical wiring interconnect system.
We had issues in the factory with systems not working properly.
This is not that unusual.
These things can happen as the other captain mentioned.
He mentioned he had a background in electronics, and so do I in the military.
And these switches are not purely mechanical.
If they were purely mechanical, there would be a physical connection between that switch and whatever that end object is.
And so what we need to do is we need to go through the signal flow, the detailed signal flow.
And these, again, I'm saying I'm not an expert because I value the fact that there's areas of expertise that, say, Captain Steve has, but there's areas of expertise that other people with other disciplines have.
So electronic technicians, electrical engineers, systems engineers, those individuals need to be involved in this.
And that's what I mean when I say I'm not an expert.
Okay.
I mean, Captain Shinto, it seems to me pretty extraordinary that we don't know definitively, and that Boeing haven't said actually, as a definitive statement of fact, because it seems to me utterly material, this information to the inquiry as to whether this could be done any other way.
If we assume, as it's the working assumption, that these fuel switches were turned off, if there is no way for that to have been done without human engagement by the pilots, then it's pretty clear what probably happened.
If there is a way it could have happened, if it could have been an electrical fault or whatever, obviously it opens up all sorts of other theories.
Absolutely.
The mere fact that there is no statements is in sync with the ICOV NXR-13.
Nobody.
It's a legal document for everyone in aviation.
I mean, with due respects to Steve, the mere fact that we're discussing possibilities to a matter which is subjudic, we could be legally tried actually by the International Civil Aviation Organization as per the NXT-13.
No matter with respect to an investigation is to be discussed.
As a media person, as a journalist, you're more than welcome.
It's your investigative journalism, which is more you're more than welcome to speculate.
But as aviators, as signatories to the ICAL, we are duty bound.
We cannot be just throwing around theories without substance.
Boeing is well within its rights for not making a statement because when it is asked upon by the investigation, by NTSP, by FA, I'm sure they will provide all the information.
Right now, what are the facts on record?
That's all we can discuss.
We cannot make hypothesis based on what is not there.
We cannot assume pilot one said this, pilot two's hand went there.
Nothing in the report which is available mentions anything of that sort.
Well, that's not hang on, hang on.
That's not strictly true, is it?
Because we know from the cockpit voice recordings they've managed to retrieve so far that one of the pilots said to the other, why did you cut off?
And the other pilot replied he did not, he hadn't done so.
So we know that conversation happened.
Absolutely.
We do not know who said what.
We do not know.
We are assuming that pilot who was not flying.
Well, again, again, hang on.
Again, what we're assuming is, and this comes down to the critical point of whether a human could actually, whether this could have happened without human involvement, that the fuel switch is being turned off.
Because if you assume it can only be, if the facts are that it can only be done by human engagement and you have that voice recording that's been retrieved and you work on the assumption the co-pilot would have had his hands actually taking off, then that leaves the obvious working theory, which seems pretty good one to me, that it must have been something that the main pilot had done.
Now, if it turns out that Captain Steve is wrong, and I'll come back to you, Captain Steve here, you know, you seem completely certain that this could only be done by a human, but the other two are suggesting that is not the case and that it can be caused by other ways.
You know, are you 100%?
Are you 99.9?
How would you categorize your certainty here?
Well, you always have to leave a little bit of uncertainty for anything, right?
Are we 100% on anything?
But I don't disagree with Ed that there are other systems on the Boeing aircraft that operate in the way that he described.
It's just not the fuel control switches.
When I say they're a mechanical switch, they operate a relay, which operates the valves.
They're not directly connected to the valves.
All right.
But a relay is a 14-volt DC thing that is either open or closed based on the position of the fuel control valve or switch where it's placed.
So in order to believe that somehow they transitioned on their own, you have to believe that they come out of the detent.
They've somehow vibrated or some other reason, and both of them did it within one second of each other, just after a smooth rotate into the air.
That's 100 billion to one.
Blameless Pilots And Open Questions00:02:07
It's much more plausible to believe that somehow they were transitioned to cutoff by a hand, even though it's horrible.
I don't want to think of that.
I don't want to blame the pilots.
I know they're not here, but it's the only explanation that fits all of the parameters correctly.
Opening up the one-tenth of 1% that it could have been something else, but it wasn't an electronic signal that errantly got sent off to close those valves.
It would have to be that relay opened or that relay closed.
That's the only way to open it.
And in relation to Captain Shinta's point, somebody who's a former pilot like you shouldn't even be theorizing.
What do you say to that?
Well, again, you know what would solve all this, Pierce, would be if the people who wrote this report got in front of a camera and behind a microphone.
We're all here having a spirited discussion about what we think happened.
The people that have the real answers, the first question I would ask the people that wrote this report is, what do you mean it transitioned from run to cutoff?
Explain what you mean by the word transition.
Yeah.
And then have them explain that in some other terms.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think it's utterly key to the whole investigation is just to have it publicly stated whether these fuel switches could have been cut off without human involvement.
If the answer is they couldn't have been, then obviously everything flows from that.
I've got to leave it there.
I want to thank all three of my guests.
It's a really interesting debate this.
And obviously, it's a very serious debate because so many people lost their lives.
And we need answers.
And I agree with Captain Steve.
We need more accountability and more people to front up, I think, about this.
We're doing the reports of Boeing and others.
There's been a kind of deafening wall of virtual silence, which all that does is fuel conspiracy theories.
It doesn't shut you down.
So I think more accountability and more public statements would go a long way to helping the public try and come to terms of what happened here.
Because anyone flying on a Boeing Dreamliner right now is thinking, well, hang on, what happened here?
And could that happen to my plane?
I know I do.
Seeking Clarity Amidst Fog00:00:37
I fly on these all the time.
I would love to have some answers and some clarity at the moment.
There's just a fog of war around it.
Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
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