@pavel my money is on a brain fart
there's recent prior art: the nepali turboprop crashed because the pilot accidentally feathered the blades and before that a 737 that went in the drink in hawaii because the pilot shut the wrong engine after the other one failed. had that happened over a land, it would've looked the same. simple mistakes at unfortunate times with no time to recover.
by now the investigators probably know something, inspected at least the air india's fleet and procedures, and didn't ground 787s or anything.
@pavel leaving $10 on the table
rat deployed automatically because power was lost. i was implying pilot accidentally shut the wrong engine. it is unusual, but not unheard off. note in the pokhara crash PM feathered the propeller instead of deploying flaps.
avherald quotes the investigators: "the crew did not give up until the very last moment. The probability of a technical cause is high". they're speculating from what they heard on the CVR and are uncertain.
the 737 pilots in hawaii also didn't give up, or realize their mistake in the interviews with investigators. such are the brain farts. it took a FDR readout to figure it out.
@pavel well, while the crash very well might not have been due to a human error,
the investigation at this point is a human error...
"A preliminary report is to be expected in three months."
@pavel yes the clown minister blabbering about sabotage is the reason to have doubts about competency, if doubting transparency wasn't enough