He seems to be suggesting the possibility of a warning that the switches were off, and fuel cut, but no movement of the physical switches. 

Edited July 25, 2025Jul 25 by martin-w

On 7/19/2025 at 7:15 PM, Luke said:

I'll be more explicit so you can follow along.

Given that there's no inherent right to be a commercial pilot, Dave's standard of 100% accuracy doesn't need to apply. We already have a process where people can lose legal rights on the basis of mental incapacity, with a civil standard of proof. There's no reason we cannot do the same for commercial pilots.

This is where I disagree with you. Your premise makes sense on paper. But to take someone job away from them and then say we dont need to be 100% accurate about it is very scary. 
 

What’s your threshold of accuracy? 

Can the pilot appeal?

How many psych evals will a pilot have to go through during their career?

When do they start?

For all class of medical? Or just first class?

who does the evals? 
 

Currency of an eval before applying for a medical?

It isn’t as black and white as you would like it to be.

We are talking about someone having a rough time in life and then telling them that if they get help, they will lose their livelihood. They may not have a God given right to be a commercial pilot, but they do have a right to be  able to get the help they need without fear of not ever being able to hold a medical again or losing their job. 
 

The state of this stuff in the FAA is so out of touch with reality. We have a HIMS program but we don’t have anything for when a pilot finds out his whole family was killed by a drunk driver when he was flying a transcon and he doesn’t know how to deal with it a month later.

I understand your point of view on things. My personal opinion isn’t we want this stuff to stop, then we need to allow men and woman to get the help they need with the open opportunity to heal and then get back in the cockpit. You may have communicated that as well but your posts read as black and white and if you have a bad season, you’re done being a pilot for ever. 

I wondered, referring to the preliminary report, how a young FO with fewer flight hours than the Commander could ask him an "explicit" and seriously accusatory question like, "Why did you put the switches in cutoff?" without even the slightest certainty—that is, that he saw the Commander move the switches and not simply say, "Why are the switches in cutoff?" if he had only noticed the loss of engine power and then looked at the position of the switches.

Unfortunately, the transcript ends with the Captain's response: "I didn't move the switches." We don't know if there was any follow-up to this discussion, but it's pointless to hide the fact that the Captain and FO knew there was no hope of restarting the engines in time, and the crash would be inevitable. And in this terrible situation, in addition to waiting more than 10 seconds before putting the switches back into Run mode, weren't words exchanged between an accused Captain and the FO accusing him of a "nevertheless to be confirmed" possible suicide?

There was also talk of shielding the switches and being able to activate them after raising a door, but I believe that, if necessary, it would be better to install a sort of horizontal barrier that can be raised to move the switches and lowered again once they've been put into Run mode, further blocking accidental movement of the switches
with an audible warning when the barrier is in the raised position.

5 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

You may have communicated that as well but your posts read as black and white and if you have a bad season, you’re done being a pilot for ever. 

Genuine question - how is that different from a bad recurrent training period or a mistake that leads to an incident on the job? There seem to be a lot of ways to permanently end one's career as a commercial pilot without any loss of life involved.

Cheers

On 7/25/2025 at 1:38 PM, Luke said:

Genuine question - how is that different from a bad recurrent training period or a mistake that leads to an incident on the job? There seem to be a lot of ways to permanently end one's career as a commercial pilot without any loss of life involved.

Cheers

Both of these instances you bring up are handled in a much different way than the way mental health is handled. Whether that’s a good thing…they might be for a different conversation at a different time. 
 

Mental health issues are treated as the pilot is unsafe and hopeless, he/she is a detriment to the safety of everyone around them. He/she must have something wrong with them and as a result, shouldn’t fly. It’s heavily stigmatized.

Performance issues are treated as the pilot doing something egregiously wrong must be the last conclusion. Maybe they weren’t trained well enough. Maybe they had a bad day, but if we train them and get them back up to speed, they should be fine. Just gotta keep training and fixing.

Im sure you can sense a seasoning of generalization with my comparison. 
 

In both cases….mental health and accident/incident….should the pilot be removed from the flight deck? Absolutely. Should the pilot be banished from ever flying again? Not until all stones are turned and all options exhausted and conclusive evidence has been brought up to show that the pilot’s metal status is truly permanent and a safety risk or in the accident/incident case, they were woefully reckless.

Anyone surprised how this story died and no one is talking about the cause anymore? 

 

Has the cause been positively identified?

17 hours ago, paulyg123 said:

Qualcuno si è chiesto come questa storia sia finita nel dimenticatoio e nessuno ne abbia più parlato? 

 

As in all air accident investigations, after the first preliminary official report, we have to wait for the final report of the commission of inquiry, and it may take a long time before it is published, in any case, if I'm not mistaken, within a year of the start of the investigation.

21 hours ago, paulyg123 said:

Anyone surprised how this story died and no one is talking about the cause anymore? 

 

I’m not surprised. Unfortunately, the news cycle moves on and people forget.

On 8/17/2025 at 12:00 PM, paulyg123 said:

Anyone surprised how this story died and no one is talking about the cause anymore? 

 

Until more information comes out, we don't know anything else right now.  We may never know for sure.  Right now I think there's more than one plausible theory.  We haven't "forgotten" but there's really nothing more to discuss until the final report comes out.  We can all have our own opinions, but at this point that's all they are.  

Again, we may never have a difinitive answer.  Sometimes "we don't know for sure" is the only answer.  

How can "we don't know for sure" be an acceptable result to an investigation like this? On the slim chance that this could actually be some kind of weird electrical issue that nobody has come across before, we absolutely need to know!

50 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

How can "we don't know for sure" be an acceptable result to an investigation like this? On the slim chance that this could actually be some kind of weird electrical issue that nobody has come across before, we absolutely need to know!

I know this bothers people, but what if there are some facts we'll just never know?  Was the pilot having a personal issue with no prior evidence?  Some random mechanical failure?  I have my guess, but I don't know.  

The facts take you as far as they can.  What other choice is there?  Speculation and jumping to conclusions?  

Look how much time has passed by  and no official announcement.  Nothing in the news at all.  I always knew the real cause of the crash would be covered up and never released to the public.  You have to figure that tons of investigators poured over the black boxes and know the truth about the cut off switches and cause of the crash.  But again, the truth is hidden to protect the airline and the pilots.  

18 minutes ago, paulyg123 said:

Look how much time has passed by  and no official announcement.  Nothing in the news at all.  I always knew the real cause of the crash would be covered up and never released to the public.  You have to figure that tons of investigators poured over the black boxes and know the truth about the cut off switches and cause of the crash.  But again, the truth is hidden to protect the airline and the pilots.  

What are you on about?  Investigations take years to be completed.  You need a break from the internet.

2 hours ago, paulyg123 said:

Look how much time has passed by  and no official announcement.  Nothing in the news at all.  I always knew the real cause of the crash would be covered up and never released to the public.  You have to figure that tons of investigators poured over the black boxes and know the truth about the cut off switches and cause of the crash.  But again, the truth is hidden to protect the airline and the pilots.  

A preliminary report is usually issued in 30–90 days after the accident, revealing the main facts uncovered by the investigation up to that point. But this is a BASIC report, and NOT definitive.

The Final Report is usually complete from 18 months to 2 years after the accident. The time here depends on what testing was required. If there is toxicology tests on the flight crew, the report may be delayed.

taken from google search