FlyAstarJets

Absolutely agree with this. The crux of the matter is knowing who pushed TOGA changes nothing. But the actions taken afterwards are key and identifiable by means already in place today.

akfrtdwg 57

So you are more interested in placing blame than knowing what happened. We know what happened, the switches got bumped. Who did it doesn’t change anything and the NTSBs job isn’t to blame anyone. Nor should that be your concern. The concern should be on what happened and how to make sure it never happens again. Not this guy is to blame cause he instigated the sequence of events. News for ya, the sequence of events starts years ago, focusing on the TOGA switch and who pushed what is a red herring on getting down bottom of what really caused the accident.

lgaflyer

what makes you think it got bumped and not pushed intentionally or a short causing it to activate by itself?

What you are saying is the same as saying you don't care what caused the wrong engine to be shut down but rather their reaction after they shut the wrong engine. Or you don't care what caused the stall if the airplane but rather their reaction after it is stalled. That isn't the way approach accident/incident investigation

what I'm saying is that both the cause and their reaction should be looked at

BoilerUP

Ergonomics and Occam’s Razor?

lgaflyer

with that attitude, ntsb only needed 1.5 days for investigation, not 1.5 years. NZ court wouldn't have reveal a cover up in the Erabus crash and MH370 is no longer a mystery.

BoilerUP

Has a 757/767 ever experienced a TOGA button short that initiated GA mode? I’d bet Boeing and the NTSB know.

Along those same lines, what evidence is there TOGA activation was intentional?

Theories cannot be discounted, but in the absence of evidence they also cannot be the default suspected causes.

I think we’d all prefer that a “professional” pilot didn’t accidentally activate TOGA without knowing then reacted so poorly to it that he pushed to 50 degrees nose down at full power and flew a perfectly good jet into the ground.

Doesn’t mean that isn’t exactly what happened, though....

terks43

The accident didn’t happen because GA was activated, it happened because there was an ATP that thought the aircraft was stalling, not by itself a bad thing, but then LOWERED THE NOSE AGGRESSIVELY TO 50 DEGREES BELOW THE HORIZON. When I was a CFI if a primary student did that to me that would be a huge talking to about over controlling the aircraft. But if you read the dockets you’ll find out that this guy had done the exact same thing multiple times in the past in simulator sessions. The problem is how did someone so grossly incompetent ever come within 5ft of a cockpit. Stall recovery like that is grounds to fail a sport pilot ride, this guy was an ATP.

FourFans130

I still find myself asking what the CA was doing throughout all this. I was expecting to hear an exclamation from the CA and a hostile takeover of the controls.

lgaflyer

what evidence is there TOGA activation was unintentional?

my agrument stands around the support for CVideoR and not the particulars of this particular accident

Adlerdriver

What evidence would a video of the captain or FO actuating the switch provide that it was intentional? Video still wouldn’t give us any additional information about their thought process, so you would have to use the CVR/FDR data as well and we’d be exactly where we are right now. Have you ever pushed a button or actuated a control thinking that you wanted to at the moment and then realizing afterwards that it was wrong? On video I’m sure it looks pretty intentional, until you react appropriately and reverse your decision. Usually that occurs with some vocal communication about your mistake. Since there was no communication about the toga actuation, the video is going to provide no additional evidence about the intent of the person who did it.

You might be able to use it to make additional assumptions about their intent. If it happened while the captain was returning his hand from the flap handle or the FO was stowing the speed brakes, you might be able to make a case that it was unintentional which is exactly what the investigators already did with the information they had. They also looked at the phase of flight. The aircraft was in a descent at 6000 feet, 40 miles from the destination – so why would anybody actuate TOGA at that time? If it was intentional they would normally make a call out which didn’t happen. There’s lots of evidence that it was unintentional when you look at the overall situation and put their actions in the context of the event. Where do you see even a tiny bit of evidence that the actuation was intentional and what exactly would that look like if you actually had video of the event?