Former pilot points to chip malfunction, not pilot error in initial report on AI171 tragic crash
The AI 171 crash of the Boeing Dreamliner 787-8 aircraft in Gujarat's Ahmedabad killed 260 people, including 229 passengers, 12 crew members, and 19 people on the ground.
Senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University and former pilot Marco Chan said that although the report did not explicitly exonerate the two pilots from human error, the chances of accidentally switching the fuel cut-off toggle would be 'close to zero'.
The preliminary report, released on July 12, depicted confusion in the cockpit shortly before the jetliner crashed and killed 260 people last month, after the plane's engine fuel cutoff switches flipped almost simultaneously and starved the engines of fuel.
'If you will to exonerate the pilots from Pilot Error. This is what the reports were stating. Now they didn't say that explicitly, but from reading the findings, it tells me that it wasn't a Pilot error. What the report seems to be suggesting is the error with the chip,' the former pilot told Reuters in an interview.
'What the report seems to be suggesting is the error with the chip. It's as simple as one chip not working properly, losing contact,' he added.
A former pilot has shed light on the possible cause of the AI171 crash, stating that a technical issue may have been responsible for the incident. According to the former pilot, once contact is lost, the system can fail, much like a laptop experiencing a blue screen of death.
He explained that the thermal cycle being in a warm condition could have caused the signal to not be contacted properly. 'Once you lose contact, it's kind of like how electricity works; the signal is not contacted properly. It's because the thermal cycle is in a warm condition,' Chan said.
The former pilot further elaborated that the system may have stopped functioning due to excessive workload, similar to a laptop shutting down. 'It's been working very hard, like your laptop stops working, basically giving you the blue screen of death and Windows,' the former pilot added.
During the interview with Reuters, the former pilot pointed out that the fuel control unit (FU) failed to receive a command to stay in a run position, resulting in a brief interruption in fuel supply. 'It doesn't command the FU to be in a run position even for a split second. The fuel stopped for a couple of seconds, and the engine will start decelerating,' the former pilot explained.
Raising key questions about the Air India AI171 crash, highlighting two main areas of investigation. Chan said the investigation should focus on whether Air India carried out necessary maintenance and replacement of certain chips in accordance with the Service Bulletin.
'I would say now this spotlight would be on, first of all, whether Air India has carried out the necessary maintenance and replacement of those chips according to the Service Bulletin,' Marco Chan added.
The former pilot further emphasised the need to investigate the nature of the bulletin issued by GE Aviation (previously known as General Electric) and its partner, Bowen. 'The second question will likely be for Bowen and General Electric together, why it was issued as a surface bulletin rather than an airworthiness kind of mandate, where a directive or call that you must carry out those actions,' he added. (ANI)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Nvidia AI chips worth $1 billion entered China despite US curbs: Report
Nvidia's advanced artificial intelligence chips worth at least $1 billion were smuggled to China in the three months after Washington tightened chip export controls, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. The AI chip designer's high-end B200 processors, banned for sale in China, is widely available on a thriving Chinese black market for US chips, the report said, citing sales contracts, company filings and multiple people with direct knowledge of the deals. Nvidia told Reuters that building data centers with smuggled products is inefficient both technically and financially, as the company only offers service and support for authorized products. The US Department of Commerce, White House and Thai government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not independently verify the FT report. In May, multiple Chinese distributors started selling B200s to suppliers of data centers that serve Chinese AI groups, according to the report. The U.S. and China are battling for global dominance in AI and other cutting-edge technologies, triggering a tightrope walk for companies such as Nvidia between the world's two largest economies. Nvidia last week said it would be allowed to resume sales to China after the Trump administration reversed an export restriction on the sales of chips such as H20. The curbs were imposed in April. In the three months before that, Chinese distributors from Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces sold Nvidia's B200s, as well as other restricted processors such as the H100 and H200, according to the report. Southeast Asian countries have become markets where Chinese groups obtained restricted chips, the report said, citing industry experts. The U.S. Commerce Department is discussing adding more export controls on advanced AI products to countries such as Thailand as soon as September, the report said.
Time of India
34 minutes ago
- Time of India
China plans network to sell surplus computing power in crackdown on data centre glut
China is taking steps to build a network to sell computing power and curb the unwieldy growth of data centres after thousands of local government-backed centres that sprouted in the country caused a capacity glut and threatened their viability. The state planner is conducting a nationwide assessment of the sector after a three-year data centre building boom, according to two sources familiar with the matter and a document seen by Reuters. Beijing is also seeking to set up a national, state-run cloud service for harnessing surplus computing power, according to Chinese government policy advisers. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is collaborating with China's three state telecoms companies on ways to connect the data centres in a network to create a platform that can sell the computing power, they said. "Everything will be handed over to our cloud to perform unified organisation, orchestration, and scheduling capabilities," Chen Yili, deputy chief engineer at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a think tank affiliated to the industry ministry, told an industry conference in Beijing last month. Chen did not specify details of the cloud service proposal, but his presentation materials showed China was targeting standardised interconnection of public computing power nationwide by 2028, even as some analysts were skeptical about the plan given the technological challenges it posed. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, the state-run telecoms companies, and MIIT did not respond to requests for comment. The sources did not want to be identified because of the sensitivities of the issue. NATIONWIDE NETWORK China's data centre building boom kickstarted in 2022 after Beijing launched an ambitious infrastructure project called "Eastern Data, Western Computing", aimed at coordinating data centre construction by concentrating facilities in western regions - where energy costs are cheaper - to meet demand from the eastern economic hubs. Chen said at the June event that the industry ministry has so far licensed at least 7,000 computing centres. A Reuters review of government procurement documents for data centres used in computing shows a surge last year in state investment, totalling 24.7 billion yuan ($3.4 billion), compared to over 2.4 billion yuan in 2023. This year, already 12.4 billion yuan has been invested in these centres, most of it in the far-west region of Xinjiang. But while only 11 such data centre-related projects were cancelled in 2023, over 100 cancellations occurred over the past 18 months, pointing to growing concerns among local governments about returns on their investments. And utilisation rates are estimated to be low, with four sources putting them at around 20%-30%. Driven by expectations that government and state-owned firms will act as buyers, investors and local governments tend to build without considering real market needs, said a project manager who works for a server company that provides products for such data centers. "The idea of building data centers in remote western provinces lacks economic justification in the first place," said Charlie Chai, an analyst with 86Research, adding lower operating costs had to be viewed against degradation in performance and accessibility. To regulate the sector's growth, China's state planner National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) initiated a nationwide assessment earlier this year that has already tightened scrutiny of new data center projects planned after March 20, and banned local governments from participating in small-sized computing infrastructure projects. The NDRC aims to prevent resource wastage by setting specific thresholds - such as requiring a computing power purchase agreement and a minimum utilisation ratio - to filter out unqualified projects, according to a person familiar with the matter, who did not provide details on the thresholds. NDRC did not respond to a request for comment. CHALLENGES Industry sources and Chinese policy advisers said the formation of a computing power network will not be easy, given that the technology for data centers to efficiently transfer the power to users in real-time remains underdeveloped. When the Chinese government rolled out the Eastern Data, Western Computing project, it targeted a maximum latency of 20 milliseconds by 2025, a threshold necessary for real-time applications such as high-frequency trading and financial services. However, many facilities, especially those built in the remote western regions, still have not achieved this standard, the project manager said. Many of the centres also use different chips from Nvidia and local alternatives such as Huawei's Ascend chips, making it difficult to integrate various AI chips with different hardware and software architectures to create a unified cloud service. Chen, however, was optimistic, describing a vision of the cloud bridging the differences in underlying computing power and the physical infrastructure. "Users do not need to worry about what chips are at the bottom layer; they just need to specify their requirements, such as the amount of computing power and network capacity needed," he said.
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Chinese EV major BYD to roll out first car assembled in Pakistan by 2026
BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle maker, is planning to launch its first car assembled in Pakistan by August 2026. The world's largest EV maker aims to capture growing demand for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in Pakistan. The automaker has been expanding rapidly outside its home market, where it is in a strong price war. The Pakistan assembly plant addresses rising demand from emerging markets and allows the company to take advantage of incentives offered by the Pakistani government. The plant has been under construction since April near Karachi in a partnership between BYD and Mega Motor Company, a subsidiary of Pakistani utility Hub Power, Danish Khaliq, vice president of sales and strategy at BYD Pakistan, told Reuters. Initially, the facility would have the capacity to produce 25,000 units a year on a double shift. It will start by assembling imported parts, with some local production of non-electric components, said Khaliq. He added it would initially produce vehicles for the domestic market, with potential to export to right-hand drive countries in the region depending on freight costs and business economics. "We do not foresee excess capacity in our system as demand in Pakistan will catch up," he also said. BYD is hoping that the market size of EVs and plug-in hybrid cars in Pakistan would grow three to four times in 2025 from around 1,000 total units in 2024. The automaker is targeting a 30-35 per cent share of the segment. The carmaker will launch its Shark 6 plug-in hybrid pickup truck in Pakistan on Friday. China's MG already sells a PHEV SUV, while rival Haval is set to join the segment soon. China's BYD will delay mass production at its new electric vehicle factory in Hungary until 2026 and will run the plant at below capacity for at least the first two years, Reuters reported, citing sources. At the same time, China's No. 1 automaker will start making cars earlier than expected at a new plant in Turkey where labour costs are lower, and will vastly exceed its announced production plans, one of the sources said. Shifting production away from Hungary in favour of Turkey would be a setback for the European Union, which has been hoping that its tariffs on EVs made in China would bring in Chinese investments and well-paid manufacturing jobs.
