Jeremy Clarkson: Why does any plane need a fuel cut-off switch?

Times

2 days ago

Whenever Lisa and I board an aeroplane, we are usually pretty confident that it will land safely because between us, we've walked away from three crashes over the years.
Both mine involved broken landing gear and were fairly minor but hers was a proper shunt. She was the only passenger in a Learjet that careered off the end of the runway at Northolt and on to the A40, where it was hit so hard by a van that it split in two. It's amazing no one was killed and if you google the images, you'll see what I mean.
But whatever, the upshot is that the law of averages suggests we are unlikely to be involved in any such thing again, which is why we can both enjoy the champagne and the food, and settle smoothly into a state of deep relaxation.
And there's more too, because these days we've come to understand that flying in a plane is safer than driving to the airport. They are flown by computers and if they fail, there are two humans on hand to take control. And they're not just any old humans. They're pilot humans. So they have reassuring one-syllable Christian names and three-syllable surnames.
And they have reassuring voices too so even the most terrifying announcement sounds like a breeze. 'Hello ladies and gentlemen. It's first officer Mike Anderson here. Don't be alarmed by the noise you just heard. One of the engines has fallen off but we have the situation in hand now and I trust you're not in too much distress.' You then have another glass of fizz and go back to sleep.
However, after the Air India crash a couple of weeks ago and the preliminary report into what caused it, I must say that the next time I get on an aeroplane I will have a moment of doubt. Because now I know that the buttons which shut down the fuel to the engines are located between the pilots, right next to the throttles.
Why put them there? I once made an expansive gesture at a friend's Sunday morning drinks party and the consequences of my exuberance were fairly terrible, because I sent a tray of four bloody marys cascading through the room, covering everyone and everything in a thick layer of tomato juice. That was bad, but now we discover that if a pilot makes a similar gesture while flying a plane it's not just a few drinks that get spilled. There's a period of silence followed by some G-force and lots of fire.
Surely then, the switches for something as critical as fuel getting to the engines should be tucked away somewhere, in a locked safe perhaps, under the pilot's seat.
Or how's this for an even better idea? Don't fit fuel cut-off switches in the cockpit at all. Because I've racked my brains and I cannot think of a single occasion when you'd need them. 'Hey Mike. Do you think the passengers would sleep more soundly if there was less noise?' No one's ever said that. No one ever will. And nor has any boss written to his flight crew urging them to save the airline money by trying to take off using nothing but some rosaries and a dollop of hope.
Think about it in terms of your car. What if there was a switch right next to the heater knob that disengaged the steering? You'd do your damnedest to never knock it by accident but eventually, you'd start to wonder: 'Why would I ever want to have no steering? And why is there a stalk right next to the indicator which turns off the brakes?'
Or at home. You have two side-by-side switches in your kitchen. One turns the lights on. The other ignites the gas tank.
I think part of the problem here is that industry is becoming stupidly obsessed with giving customers a level of choice they simply don't need. In my car, for example, I'm able to select the colour of the interior lighting from a palate that makes Farrow & Ball's look mean-spirited. And at home, I have a controller that allows me to make each room a different temperature, and for that temperature to change up to four times a day.
In a modern tractor, the farmer is given a bewildering array of buttons and now each of those buttons can be tailored to do something different. And if you look at a steering wheel in a modern Formula 1 car, you realise that the driver can, as he goes along, make his car feel like a Morris Marina. Or even a food blender. And even those have become way too complicated. You bought it because you like to liquefy your vegetables and now you can choose from a vast menu of options that are just annoying.
Tech designers can't help themselves. They see that something is possible, so they provide it, whether anyone needs it or not. And that brings us back to the world of aviation. The old jumbo had 10,000 switches, dials and gauges in the cockpit, all of which were necessary because it was a big analogue Heffalump. But modern planes aren't. They have glass screens, so in theory all the panels could be as smooth and as uncluttered as a Swede's kitchen sideboard.
But no geek is going to allow that. He's going to give the pilots choices. Does he want to control the plane from the glass screen or in the old-fashioned way and whoa, how cool would it be to fill that panel over there with switches and choices as well? So on a modern-day commercial jet, the roof panel alone has over 200 buttons. And this is on a machine that only ever needs to go up, down, left or right.
Small wonder then that when the tech wizards got to the central console, where the thrust levers are located, they thought: 'Wow. We could fill that up with options. So let's have two switches which allow the pilot to turn the bloody fuel supply to the engines off.'