yup 
Would the fuel cutoff switches be reachable by hand or foot from a cockpit jump seat?
Via Reddit, I happened upon a very similar incident from 1980: the flight engineer* (most likely) shut off all four engines of a 707 just after takeoff. However, he did it just a second too early, so the other pilots were able to land back on the runway (the plane was damaged beyond repair, but no one died). It seems the 2025 Air India pilot (probably the captain) learned from this “mistake” – probably by testing it out on a home simulator, he got the timing just “right”. 
(“The exact cause of the accident remains undetermined…The flight engineer committed suicide a day later, jumping out the window from his hotel.”)
Here’s a video recreation of that 1980 incident (I’m not sure how accurate it is – it seems to me the video shows the plane going higher than 100 feet):
There are two cockpit jumpseats on a typical 787. One is intended for use by a working crewmember and can be positioned pretty much directly aft of the center console with designed-in easy access to most of the switchology of the airplane. Including the engine switches.
Fascinating discussion. Thanks, all.
There was once (1980s?) a vaguely similar event on a 747, but it was totally inadvertent.
In cruise, the fuel and everything else outside gets real cold. So the engines incorporate a fuel heat system which is a radiator where hot engine oil can be diverted through one side while cold inlet fuel runs through the other. The passing fuel gets rapidly hotter, which in turn warms the downstream plumbing & pumps and whatnot. All places where you don’t want ice to form.
Typically you run these things for a minute when needed. That gets all the plumbing nice and toasty for awhile. Which depending on cruise conditions might be needed every 20 minutes or maybe only once every couple hours. The standard drill was to start a stop watch, turn on the heat for engine 1, wait 15 seconds, turn on #2, etc. By the time you’d turned on #4, 15 seconds later it was time to turn off #1, then #2, etc. Two minutes elapsed and each was run for a minute and all are back off.
The key idea being, do them sequentially, and watch how each engine reacts before flipping the next switch. If something unexpected happens, stop what you’re doing. The normal reaction by the engine to this was not much; you’d see the oil temp start dropping and that was about it.
Anyhow, late at night over the middle of the dark, dark, and boring ocean the sleepy FE starts his stopwatch, flips his first switch. The auxiliary fuel shutoff switch on his panel. That cuts fuel off well upstream of the engine, leaving several seconds’ worth of fuel in the plumbing downstream to the engine. 15 seconds later he flips #2, then #3 in turn. About the time switch #3 is turned off, the #1 engine suddenly quits. Which on a 4-engine old non-computerized airplane in cruise is actually not that wrenchingly obvious an event. The engine gauges all start moving, the airplane jolts slightly, but that could be turbulence, and the autopilot & autothrottle compensates adequately and you blunder along nicely.
The pilots start rousing about the time #2 quits and the autopilot disconnects and sounds an alarm because now there’s more yaw than it can handle. Then #3 quits as they’re gathering their wits & trying to diagnose this mystery with no awareness the FE had changed anything.
Now everyone is wide awake. The FE pretty quickly realizes what he’d done and turns the three engine fuel supply switches back on. Now they just need to restart them all while gliding downwards with only #4 unruffled.
Oops. The combination of lack of sleep, extreme boredom, 3am, complacency, and muscle memory can be bad.
EAA has a bunch of live Airventure cameras. I checked out the seaplane base and got to see a contraption for gathering up the plants and algae lake Winnebago is known for. It is not there now.
Brian
I wasn’t up to last year so I watched the cams. The fireworks are really good and last year they had drones. It was neat to see a giant C-17 in a drone formation.
Well, somebody had to be first!
Great story! “Dozens of Chinese-speaking undercover police officers posing as patients were tasked with befriending Wong, and they eventually got him to admit what really happened on board Miss Macao.”
And, I love how it was known as a “cigarette flight,” because it lasted about long enough to enjoy just one such.
Another step closer to that capitalist dystopia we all dream about.
Delta has a long-term strategy to boost its profitability by moving away from set fares and toward individualized pricing using AI.** The pilot program, which uses AI for 3% of fares, has so far been “amazingly favorable,” the airline said. Privacy advocates fear this will lead to price-gouging, with one consumer advocate comparing the tactic to “hacking our brains.”
Fresh off a victory lap after a better-than-expected earnings report, Delta Air Lines is leaning into AI as a way to boost its profit margins further by maximizing what individual passengers pay for fares.
By the end of the year, Delta plans for 20% of its ticket prices to be individually determined using AI, president Glen Hauenstein told investors last week.
And the way it works may not be what you’d naively expect:
Early research on personalized pricing isn’t favorable for the consumer. Consumer Watchdog found that the best deals were offered to the wealthiest customers—with the worst deals given to the poorest people, who are least likely to have other options.
Although there was a scandal early in Amazon’s days when it was found that the same merchandise was priced higher when viewed on an Apple device alongside a PC or Android device at the same time.
Turns out some bright Amazon person had decided that Apple-owning folks were on average richer or blingier or something than mere Windows users, and would gladly pay 10% extra.
Why in the name of unholy Jehovah fuck would they NOT charge the richest more?!
Did you read the cite? The only example he cited of “rich pay less” was in subscribing to internet service in the home. Guess what? Lots more unpaid bills, damage of equipment, churn, etc., in lower income areas than higher. All those extra costs gotta be offset somehow.
You might also be astonished to learn that the rich get lower interest rates on their credit cards. Why? Because of the hefty amount of bad debt write-off among the poorer folks, the interest rates are jacked to cover for that very real cost.
That whole paper is a good read. This will be an ever growing problem in every area of commerce.
Once AI pricing is put into effect, I expect there to be sites that use AI to tell consumers when and how to book the cheapest flights.
In the very early days of e-commerce there were promising ideas about price comparison websites or apps or gizmos where you could identify what you want and the app will go check all the suppliers for you and return the best price. Which “frictionless competition” was supposed to hand all power to the consumers and none to the vendors.
That glorious future might still be arriving, but as a famous sage once put it about a different topic: “It’s taking longer than we thought.”
From aviation past.
“Daddy, what did you do in the war?”
“I flew an aircraft that looked like something Porky Pig might’ve painted, son.”