Flight to Gatwick crashes near airport in Ahmedabad, India,

I'm not a pilot, just someone who reads The Aviation Herald a lot 😉 but I have been involved in software development for many years. Not in life-critical applications thank goodness - the notion that someone might die if I or a colleague had a bad day at work is scary (but of course in reality, there are many checks and balances in place in such cases)

In general Boeing aircraft don't depend on computers to mediate between the pilots' control inputs and the control surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudder) that actually control the plane. The 737, which is the most likely Boeing any Irish person is most likely to be flying on is still a very manual aircraft - even the MAX. Airbus are fly-by-wire but they have multiple computers which must agree, they have two teams writing software independently who should not both make the same mistakes, and millions of safe flight hours concur with this.

For sabotage, you need means and motivation. The means is fuel, but at a large airport you have either an underground pipe system or a lot of fuel trucks. You couldn't be sure of sabotaging a specific flight - or even doing anything (due to a part fuel load) other than causing a flight or flights to have engine issues and land back. Motivation - short of some evil Bond villain who would want to make a specific flight crash? Now if there was some prominent Israeli or Iranian or whoever on board, then the speculation would be up to 90… but we have no indication of any passengers on board who were "worth" going to that extent to take out.

So how much did their shares dip as a result of this? You'd have to be shorting their stock a hell of a lot to make anything much - especially as they're such a huge conglomerate with aviation just a part of their activities. Most of their money comes from steel… and tea plantations! Indians and Brits and Irish aren't going to stop drinking tea any time soon.

When a Boeing crashes, their stock goes down a bit and recovers. When an Airbus crashes, their stock goes down a bit and recovers. There are a lot easier ways of making money.

Missed this from Wed. Focus on fuel cut-off switches. Preliminary report may be published today.

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-pacific/2025/07/09/air-india-crash-focus-on-jets-fuel-switches-ahead-of-preliminary-report/

US aviation safety expert John Cox said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. “You can’t bump them and they move,” he said.

Mr Cox added that if a switch was shut off, the effect would be almost immediate, cutting off engine power.

The media reports seem to be based off this industry publication. There's a very interesting photo of the switches and what it takes to operate them.

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/ai171-investigation-fuel-control-switches/

I got given out to previously but it was obvious to me that it was a low energy takeoff, not the normal climb proflie that's for sure.

It seemed - not yet confirmed - that it had an unusually long takeoff roll, and that would explain the puff of dust on rotation because they were using a part of the runway which is not normally used.

The 787 has an asymmetric thrust compensation system, but it'd have to be some mother f*cker to acheive what we saw on video if one engine had actually failed, climb out straight as a die with no visible rudder deflection, and the ailerons doing nothing either. Nah not happening. Not aerodynamically possible.

So there was a loss of thrust, which was completely or almost completely symmetrical and "in phase" with each other - there's really only one possible explanation for that

The aircraft went down the intended heading straight as a die and there was no visible rudder deflection. Those engines went down together at the same rate.

Picture showing the switches. They have a spring loaded outer shell that needs to be pulled up to release a lock and then the switch can be moved. They are also protected by two flanges, either side, so you can't brush off them.

I don't see any evidence of a conspiracy to stall these findings. They issued a status report on 26th June which indicated the timeline that was consistent with media reports. The boxes only arrived at the investigation facility on 24 June and they downloaded the data the following day. Apparently, the lab in Delhi was only recently upgraded to be able to decode the recorders and they were left in Ahmedabad until they made the decision to do the work in India or somewhere else.

Not sure of the significance, but while the report doesn't say who made the Mayday call, the media reports initially were clear that it was the captain.