Be careful about leaning towards “pilot error” as the cause of Air India 787 crash

There was recently a flurry of speculation around the preliminary report on the cause of the Air India 787 crash in June. This centered around an apparent action to cut off the fuel to the engines by the captain. There is sometimes a rush to blame “pilot error” and update training programs, but this can be a mistake that shortchanges the possibility of more effective risk mitigation. The question we should be asking is “why would our system allow a person to take such an action?” All aspects of the aircraft that we give pilots control over and the aspects that we put under automatic control are choices that we make when we design an airplane.

If, in fact, a pilot did mistakenly or even purposely cut off fuel during ascent, the question we ought to ask is not “why would they do that?”, but “why do we give a pilot that option?”