Air India 171: INSPECT *ALL* Boeing Planes NOW!

So, regarding the Air India 171 crash,

the Air India Civil Aviation Authority

has now ordered inspections of those

fuel switches that are located right

below the throttle in a normal aircraft

uh in the Phenom. They're located a

little bit uh further down and sort of

off of a flat panel, a little bit below

the throttle controls in the Boeing 737

and the 787 aircraft. And now India is

flipping saying, "Hey, we need to

actually inspect these fuel switches on

these aircraft following that deadly

crash that killed nearly 300 people in

India last month as all of a sudden

those fuel supply switches were cut

off." Now, why is that such a big deal?

Well, because in 2018, Air India

suggested we don't need to inspect the

potential failure of these fuel switches

because we just received an advisory

notification from the FAA and that's not

enough for us to actually want to do

anything. Now, why would they not do

anything then? Well, as usual, probably

because of money. See, here's the

preliminary report where we can see per

the information from Air India suggest

inspections were not carried out in the

advisory bulletin since the bulletin was

advisory and not mandatory despite

reports that fuel switches in model 737

airplanes which had very similar fuel

control switches to the 7878 Dreamliner

that crashed in India. Despite that, Air

India did not conduct any inspections to

verify that the locking mechanism was

functional for these switches. No, even

if that locking mechanism was not

functional, the switches could still

work. Unfortunately, until you have an

accidental knock into these switches via

turbulence or who knows, maybe an

intentional uh switch off of those

switches. We don't like to think about

that, but it's always a possibility.

That said, uh, Air India is now not the

only one who's following this. Uh,

Ethiod, South Korea, Singapore, they're

all forcing now quote mandatory checks

on the fuel control switches of Boeing

airplanes uh, in India. So, all of these

various different airlines are mandating

this following the AirIndia crash and

referencing that 2018 advisory. To me,

this is a little bit of a sign that what

you're finding is companies are starting

to realize, crap, you know, maybe maybe

we should comply with that this

information bulletin and maybe we should

go inspect all of our planes even though

we didn't do it in 2018. Now, here we

are 7 years later and oopsie doopsies,

three almost 300 people lost their lives

because we decided not to follow an

advisory notice. Now, some people point

the finger at the FAA and say, "Hey,

well, it's the FAA's fault." You know,

this should have been a mandatory uh

requirement. Problem is, usually

mandatory updates,

they they don't come out of a maybe the

switches are broken. It often takes

oopsies like what we saw in India to

actually convince movement towards you

must make these changes. And why again?

Because of money. Why for something that

could happen? Spend money. It's

unfortunate to think that way, but

unfortunately that's sometimes the way

lobbying in big business can work. But

to me, this is kind of a little bit of a

slap in the face to Boeing that they

should wake up and when there are these

advisory notices, potentially Boeing

encourage mandatory notices to the

airlines using their aircraft. It is

good though seeing that not only is Air

India requiring air carriers to conduct

these inspections but you're seeing

other countries get involved in this as

well because certainly we don't want to

see these fuel supply switches cut off

again uh especially if indeed they were

an accident and since this has been

flagged in this as an issue in the past

where these switches could accidentally

be turned off now all of a sudden

regulators are going oh wow this is

actually a problem that we should be

paying attention to. Uh now the note

here uh Bloomberg who's also covering

the story says that the directorate of

general civil civil aviation has asked

operators to complete the inspections

within a week to ensure continued

airworthiness and safety of operations.

The report published last week uh

revealed that the fuel supply switches

on the Doom 787 were turned off

immediately after the plane took off. Uh

and the pilots reversed that roughly

about 10 seconds later, unfortunately

proving too late. And we saw this again.

We don't know if this was intentional or

accidental. Uh Blanco Lir had this

fantastic uh uh

perspective, I should call it, that

potentially turbulence uh led to the

bumping into these switches through

either the guarding of the throttles or

something falling on them during

rotation or whatever. It's entirely PO.

Who knows? Maybe they they had a GoPro

that was filming or something and it

during the rotation fell down and hit

those switch. I'm totally speculating on

that. The point is something could have

fallen, somebody's hand could have hit

it, whatever. It could have

theoretically been accidental. Uh and uh

if this is indeed exactly

what was warned in 2018 as what could

happen, well then we can see that even

advisory bulletins could be life saving

critical or in this case life losing. uh

ERA India's executive officer Campbell

Wilson said in a memo memo to employees

on Monday that the report provided both

greater clarity and opened additional

questions. This is true. More questions

remain now because it's well what would

have knocked into the switches again.

Elbow, arm, hand, uh device, coffee cup,

who knows? This is why so many people

are calling for, hey, we've got cameras

and semi-truckss. Why don't we have

cameras in planes? We speculated on that

yesterday and explained why. Not only

the aviation lobby, pilots, the, you

know, oversight the FAA has over pilots

and, uh, you know, aircraft behavior,

whatever. The potential leaking of

footage, who knows? These are all things

we talked about yesterday. But, uh,

we're also hearing here that several

Middle Eastern airlines have also

started inspecting their Boeing fleets.

I would imagine it's just a matter of

time before we start doing this in the

United States as well. Hopefully, knock

on wood. I highly encourage these

inspections in the United States as

well. Om Air has completed checks on

fuel switches for around a dozen 787s so

far and is now inspecting 737s in its

fleet. While Saudi is checking its jets

and said it complied with all of

Boeing's recommendations. Jordan's

national air carrier completed a visual

check of the fuel switches in the 787 in

its fleet. Visual check. I feel like you

need to actually like operate the fuel

switch to know if it's going to work.

But I think what they're looking for is

that little tab, a little metal tab to

make sure the locking mechanism is

present. But I would certainly encourage

actually operating the switch to make

sure that it locks in place. Uh, and I

mean, we've seen this before. If you

haven't seen it yet, this is roughly

what those switches look like. Uh, see,

you can see this individual is pushing

down on the switches. The switches don't

go down. They don't go down until they

get lifted to get essentially pushed

over the little gate uh that blocks it.

Pretty sad to think something so basic

could end up leading to such a disaster.

But that is an update that's now out uh

from uh and on the Air India crisis.

It's also worth noting,

you know, will will we actually have an

answer in terms of what turned them off?

We may never know. That's unfortunate.

Here, for example, is the Ethiod uh

letter indicating that there will be

anection inspection of the fuel control

switch locking mechanism.

Uh but uh it is possible that we just

may never know what actually ended up

switching these switches off. uh which

is terrible because again it just leaves

more questions than answers. But I do

think at minimum inspecting all of these

on all the potentially affected Boeings

critical first step and I'm glad to see

we're doing it.

>> Why not advertise these things that you

told us here? I feel like nobody else

knows about this.

>> We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you.

>> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst

and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great

to get your take.