I'm with Mike on this and also hugely skeptical about the veracity of this piece. A month or so ago I mentioned another "very convincing" report doing the rounds which was subsequently debunked. As in Mike's observations here, I consider any inaccurate acronyms or abbreviations to be a huge red flag. The previous piece I mentioned also made basic errors in terminology which should make anyone highly suspicious of any group using such terms yet calling themselves "experts". Examples in the previous scam were calling the Boeing's EICAS system the "ECAM" (a very Airbus acronym). Some of the other acronyms for more technical systems also didn't pass muster after only a slightly deeper analysis and crosscheck. The same applies to this example which Mike has highlighted. Interestingly, this recent piece and the previous unconvincing scam both blamed water ingress.I also agree with the general skepticism questioning any "failsafe" system that reduces the engines' thrust to idle if the signals to the FADEC are suddenly lost. That's just bonkers. To illustrate this, if a similar event happens in any Airbus the failsafe mechanism is to activate a mode called "thrust lock". This is anunciated on the pilots' displays (in flashing amber lettering, I think) and the result is that this thrust mode will hold the thrust setting at exactly where it was when the failure occurred, even if the autothrust system has failed. This makes perfect sense because if the aircraft is in a stable cruise configuration when the problem occurs, or in a climb power setting, then the prevailing thrust setting is "locked" until such time as the pilot decides to change the thrust using the thrust levers (throttles). Mike need not apologise for his "spooled up" harumph. It's very appropriate here in my opinion and perfectly justified .Simon(My spellchecker is telling me that we users of British English should spell harrumph with two "r"s. Who knew?) -------- Original message --------From: Mike Borfitz via Mifnet <[email protected]> Date: 30/10/2025 00:10 (GMT+00:00) To: [email protected] Cc: Mike Borfitz <[email protected]> Subject: [Mifnet 🛰 74606] Re: Cause of Air India 171 Skeptic here. I'm not gonna dig too deep here, but I'm finding holes everywhere, and some of what follows is opinion, common sense & a failing memory. I ALWAYS take a non-government report with a huge grain of salt. It's not true until I can determine for myself that it IS true. Scrub the damn thing, "Guilty until proven innocent."I was suspicious from Day 1 when I got the impression that all the reports from India seemed to point away from even considering human involvement. That leaves LOTS of room for "best guessing".A technical detail: normally a short circuit doesn't fix itself, especially within seconds and without leaving some sort of evidence. And (AND) a short circuit in such a critical area like ALL thrust loss would have an effect in some other system, and it's reasonable that some evidence, a glitch of some sort, would be found in the recorded data. I'm wondering if the folks who put this together started with an assumption that there was a short circuit. I don't know if it has been established as a fact, all we have is an Airworthiness Directive that requires a fix.Speaking of, AD 2016-14-04 is mentioned, then tells us of another 2024 NPRM followed by an AD in 2025 AD but they don't publish the number. That doesn't mean the AD doesn't exist, it's just a lack of thoroughness. And I'm feeling too lazy to hunt it down. They write "
We believe we have identified the cause of the crash..." but it's really not clear who "we" might be. Do they have full access to all the data?A few lines down from the headline they wrote "We have formed a community of pilots, aircraft engineers and aviation experts and this has been a team effort." OK fine but it's still vague.From some quick research it looks like the switches had moved but it's not clear to me how that happened or how it was recorded. My best guess is that the physical switch position is recorded as opposed to some sort of hidden electronic switching for BOTH engines. From the cockpit position I can imagine the pilots want a switch when things happen fast and it makes sense that the DFDR would record it. And I could be wrong so... How do they know THIS? I'm having trouble believing the CCR can shut down both engines. AND it also makes sense that the engines have FADEC, not EEC, I hit that in another bullet.  Very sorry, but THIS (screenshot below) makes no sense:. When all engine systems are functioning properly, I can't think of any reason why spooling down to idle can be a protective measure. HOWEVER I was on a Boeing 757 flight test about 40 years ago when we had an overspeed on a PW2037 that caused the FADEC to command idle, but that was an overspeed & that can be very, very bad if not corrected. AND we were still in the installation development stage, I don't remember the cause but it got fixed.THIS is absolute BS: "Each Engine Electronic Control (EEC) has its own internal power conditioning system called a FADEC." In the engineering world, EECs and FULL AUTHORITY digital engine controls (FADEC) are entirely different systems. It's been a while but I can't think of any engine having both. It was necessary in the engine world to keep their nomenclature separate. And,EEC is not Engine Electronic Control, it's Electronic Engine Control. "Back in the day" before FADEC, an EEC was what we called "supervisory". You might call it an efficiency control to save fuel. EEC failure caused reversion to the old style, very reliable hydromechanical control, no biggie, just burn a bit more fuel. FADEC was the next reasonable evolutionary step. Maybe think of EEC as a trim system.Little bit of credit, they tossed out some nice-sounding words & acronyms but after digging in I say it's word salad. Bottom line, whether "we" (the "root cause" writers) are competent or not, it really bugs me when a so-called authoritative report can be torn apart so easily. Get it 100% correct, even when describing acronyms. Credibility in these situations must be unassailable. Re-reading my little diatribe I guess I got spooled up a bit (like those engines didn't have enough time to accomplish). I've been guilty of this myself, learned a hard lesson or three, but it REALLY irks me to see reports like this, even though they may be well meant. The investigation continues, there's a long history of doing it properly, so let the process do the work.Harumph.BorfitzOn Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 6:30 PM Karl L. Swartz via Mifnet <[email protected]> wrote:One snippet:Each Engine Electronic Control (EEC) has its own internal power conditioning system called a FADEC ...Huh, I always thought FADEC stood for Full Authority Digital Engine Controller—an EEC plus supporting accessories. It’s not just the support goo for the EEC.Errors like that always make me wonder about the veracity of the remainder of an article, which is not to say that the hypothesis is wrong. -- KarlOn Oct 29, 2025, at 12:38 PM, Kathryn Creedy via Mifnet <[email protected]> wrote:I just read this saying it was a short circuit caused by water infiltration. Any comment? https://42kft.com/root-cause-of-the-air-india-ai171-crash/Kathryn-- Kathryn CreedyPHONE # 321 405 4395US-Eastern Time ZoneVisit me on LinkedIn <image007.gif> --------------------------------------------------------------------------Revised: 20250507You are receiving The Mifnet because you requested to join this list.The Mifnet is largely a labor of love, however the infrastructure isn't exactly cost-free. 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