We’re starting to get a better sense of what caused a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to rapidly descend over the South Pacific, injuring dozens (as flagged by reader David)…
Cockpit mishap behind LATAM Boeing 787 incident?
On Monday, March 11, 2024, a LATAM Boeing 787 flight from Sydney to Auckland made headlines, when the aircraft suddenly rapidly descended without warning. The descent was so steep that some passengers hit the ceiling, causing widespread injuries.
Generally if a plane enters a rapid descent without warning, and it causes injuries like this, one would assume that it was a case of severe clear air turbulence. However, from the beginning, the airline was clear that this was due to a “technical problem.” While I wouldn’t put too much weight on this statement, one passenger claimed that the pilot told him that his “gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane.”
As you’d expect, a thorough investigation is being performed into the root cause of this incident, and we’re starting to get a sense of why this might have happened. The Air Current and The Wall Street Journal are reporting on the likely cause of this incident, per investigators.
The leading theory right now is that this happened while a flight attendant was delivering a meal to the pilots. The flight attendant reportedly accidentally hit a switch on the pilot’s seat, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls, and push down the plane’s nose. The switch involved here has a cover that isn’t supposed to be used while the pilot is in the seat.
Boeing is expected to issue a memo related to this cockpit seat switch issue to 787 operators in the near future.
What a wild explanation of this incident!
On the one hand, I suppose it’s reassuring that there doesn’t seem to be a bigger technical glitch with the aircraft, which could have bigger implications for the Dreamliner fleet. On the other hand, the series of events here is kind of shocking — a flight attendant delivered a pilot a meal, accidentally pushed a button, and this caused the pilot to physically bump into the control column, pushing the plane’s nose down?
If the button has a cover and isn’t supposed to be used while a pilot is in the seat, how exactly did it get pushed?
I suppose with so many Dreamliners flying for so many years, there’s eventually going to be some bizarre series of events with major consequences, though I’m very curious what the investigation determines in terms of the sequence of events here, and how this situation occurred.
Bottom line
Earlier this week, a LATAM Boeing 787 entered a brief but steep dive, injuring dozens. We knew the incident was due to some sort of “technical glitch,” rather than severe turbulence. Within a few days, we’ve now learned the likely cause of this — a flight attendant accidentally pushed a button that moved the pilot’s seat into the flight controls, putting the plane into a steep descent.
What do you make of this explanation for the LATAM 787 incident?
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