Photos of a Buddhist festival show ritual dances in India's Ladakh
As they moved, the white human skull motifs on their costume caught the morning sun. They danced to ward off mythical evil beings and clear the courtyard of negative energy.
That set the stage for the ritual dances to follow at the Hemis Festival — or Hemis Tsechu.
Hemis Gompa belongs to the Drukpa Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and is one of the most important monasteries in Ladakh. Built in the 17th century, it lies at an elevation of about 3,560 meters (12,000 feet) in the northern Indian desert mountainous territory.
The festival, believed to have originated in the first half of the 18th century and observed annually ever since, commemorates the birthday of the 8th-century Indian master Padmasambhava, who is credited to have helped establish Buddhism in Tibet.
The two-day summer festival falls on the 10th and 11th days of the fifth month in the Tibetan calendar. This year's festival was observed on July 5 and 6.
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Air India crash report: Cockpit voices fuel controversy over doomed flight
When the preliminary report into the crash of Air India Flight 171 - which killed 260 people in June - was released, many hoped it would bring some measure of the 15-page report added fuel to a firestorm of speculation. For, despite the measured tone of the report, one detail continues to haunt investigators, aviation analysts and the public after take-off, both fuel-control switches on the 12-year-old Boeing 787 abruptly moved to "cut-off", cutting fuel to the engines and causing total power loss - a step normally done only after cockpit voice recording captures one pilot asking the other why he "did the cut-off", to which the person replies that he didn't. The recording doesn't clarify who said what. At the time of take-off, the co-pilot was flying the aircraft while the captain was we know so far about Air India crash investigationRead the preliminary reportAre India's skies safe? Air safety watchdog responds amid rising concernsThe switches were returned to their normal inflight position, triggering automatic engine relight. At the time of the crash, one engine was regaining thrust while the other had relit but had not yet recovered power. The plane was airborne for less than a minute before crashing into a neighbourhood in the western Indian city of speculative theories have emerged since the preliminary report - a full report is expected in a year or so. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Reuters news agency have reported that "new details in the probe of last month's Air India crash are shifting the focus to the senior pilot in the cockpit". Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera claimed that its sources had told them the first officer repeatedly asked the captain why he "shut off the engines". Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, was the captain on the flight, while Clive Kunder, 32, was the co-pilot who was flying the plane. Together, the two pilots had more than 19,000 hours of flight experience - nearly half of it on the Boeing 787. Both had passed all pre-flight health checks before the the wave of speculative leaks has rattled investigators and angered Indian theories swirl about Air India crash, key details remain unknownLast week, India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), the lead investigator, stated in a release that "certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting". It described these "actions [as] irresponsible, especially while the investigation remains ongoing".Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the US's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is assisting the investigation, said on X that the media reports were "premature and speculative" and that investigations of this magnitude take time". Back in India, the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association condemned the rush to blame the crew as "reckless" and "deeply insensitive", urging restraint until the final report is out. Sam Thomas, head of the Airline Pilots' Association of India (ALPA India), told the BBC that "speculation has triumphed over transparency", emphasising the need to review the aircraft's maintenance history and documentation alongside the cockpit voice recorder the heart of the controversy is the brief cockpit recording in the report - the full transcript, expected in the final report, should shed clearer light on what truly happened. A Canada-based air accident investigator, who preferred to remain unnamed, said that the excerpt of the conversation in the report presents at several example, "if pilot 'B' was the one who operated the switches - and did so unwittingly or unconsciously - it's understandable that they would later deny having done it," the investigator said. "But if pilot 'A' operated the switches deliberately and with intent, he may have posed the question knowing full well that the cockpit voice recorder would be scrutinised, and with the aim of deflecting attention and avoiding identification as the one responsible."Even if the AAIB is eventually able to determine who said what, that doesn't decisively answer the question 'Who turned the fuel off?'"."We may even never know the answer to that question."Investigators told the BBC that while there appeared to be strong evidence the fuel switches were manually turned off, it's still important to keep "an open mind". A glitch in the plane's Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system - which monitors engine health and performance - could, in theory, trigger an automatic shutdown if it receives false signals from sensors, some pilots if the pilot's exclamation - 'why did you cut-off [the fuel]?' - came after the switches moved to cut-off (as noted in the preliminary report), it would undermine that theory. The final report will likely include time-stamped dialogue and a detailed analysis of engine data to clarify has been fuelled less by who said what, and more by what wasn't preliminary report withheld the full cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript, revealing only a single, telling line from the final moments. This selective disclosure has raised questions: was the investigation team confident about the speakers' identities but chose to withhold the rest out of sensitivity? Or are they still uncertain whose voices they were hearing and needed more time to fully investigate the matter before publishing any conclusions?Peter Goelz, former NTSB managing director, says the AAIB should release a voice recorder transcript with pilot voices identified."If any malfunctions began during take-off, they would be recorded in the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and would likely have triggered alerts in the flight management system - alerts the crew would almost certainly have noticed and, more importantly, discussed."Investigators are urging restraint in drawing conclusions."We have to be cautious because it's easy to assume that if the switches were turned off, it must mean intentional action - pilot error, suicide, or something else. And that's a dangerous path to go down with the limited information we have," Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline accident investigator and aviation expert at Ohio State University, told the the same time, alternative theories continue to circulate. Indian newspapers includig the Indian Express flagged a possible electrical fire in the tail as a key focus. But the preliminary report makes clear: the engines shut down because both fuel switches were moved to cut-off - a fact backed by recorder data. If a tail fire occurred, it likely happened post-impact, triggered by spilled fuel or damaged batteries, an independent investigator week, AAIB chief GVG Yugandhar stressed that the preliminary report aims to "provide information about 'WHAT' happened"."It's too early for definite conclusions," he said, emphasising the investigation is ongoing and the final report will identify "root causes and recommendations". He also pledged to share updates on "technical or public interest matters" as they up, Mr Pruchnicki said the probe "boils down to two possibilities - either deliberate action or confusion, or an automation-related issue"."The report doesn't rush to blame human error or intent; there's no proof it was done intentionally," he other words, no smoking gun - just an uneasy wait for answers that may never even fully emerge.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Fuel to engines cut off before Air India crash, preliminary report says
Fuel to the engines of the Air India plane involved in a deadly crash was cut off moments after take-off, a preliminary investigation report has recovered cockpit voice recordings, the report said one of the pilots can be heard asking "why did you cut off?" - to which the other pilot replied he "did not do so".The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after taking off on 12 June from Ahmedabad airport in western India, killing 260 people, most of them passengers. One British national miraculously survived the crash. The investigation led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is expected to produce a more detailed report in 12 months. Follow live coverageWhat we know so far about Air India crash investigationRead the preliminary report According to data from the flight recorder, both of the plane's fuel control switches moved from the run to the cut-off position in the space of a second, shortly after switches are usually only cut off to turn off the engines after landing, or during emergency situations such as an engine fire - rather than during cut-off caused both engines to lose thrust, the AAIB report is then confusion heard in the cockpit, with one pilot asking the other why he had switched off the fuel, which the other denied. The Gatwick-bound plane was being piloted by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar. The report does not specify which voice is fuel switches then moved back into their normal in-flight position, automatically starting the process of relighting the engines. One engine, the report said, was able to regain thrust - but could not reverse the plane's deceleration. One of the pilots submitted a Mayday call just before the plane plummeted and crashed into a building used as doctors' accommodation, causing an pilots had an "adequate rest period prior" to the flight, the report had previously speculated that birds could have caused the crash, but the report said that "no significant bird activity" was observed in the vicinity of the plane's flight Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin in 2018 highlighting that some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged, the report issue was not deemed an unsafe condition requiring an Airworthiness Directive - a legally enforceable same switch design is used in Air India's VT-ANB aircraft which crashed. As the bulletin was advisory, Air India did not perform inspections. Experts who spoke to the BBC offered differing opinions on whether this could have played a factor. An Air India spokesperson said the airline acknowledged receipt of the preliminary report."We continue to fully co-operate with the AAIB and other authorities as their investigation progresses. Given the active nature of the investigation, we are unable to comment on specific details and refer all such enquiries to the AAIB," the Air India spokesperson a statement, Boeing said it would defer to AAIB to provide information about the crashed plane, in adherence with protocol under the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao). It also said it continued to support the investigation and its customer, Air US National Transportation Safety Board said that there were no recommended actions in the report aimed at operators of Boeing-787 jets or the GE accident marked the first time a 787-8 Dreamliner suffered a fatal crash since entering service in India says one engine on crashed plane was newHow the Air India crash investigation is unfoldingThe crash is a major setback for Air India, which is in the middle of a business turnaround following its privatisation. It was bought out by the Tata Group from the Indian government in airline has announced a cut in international operations on its wide-body aircraft as it grapples with several disruptions in the aftermath of the story has been corrected to clarify that the Federal Aviation Administration issued the bulletin about Boeing 737 fuel control switches in 2018
The Sun
11 hours ago
- The Sun
How pilots cutting engines sparked TWO plane disasters after South Korea & India crashes as calls for cockpit CCTV grow
PILOTS manually cutting the engines were to blame for the two most deadly air crashes of this decade, investigations suggest. With a total of 420 lives lost in the flick of three buttons, urgent questions are swirling about what can be done to reduce the risk of pilot error or sabotage. 8 8 8 8 The Jeju Air emergency-landing crash killed 179 people in December, and 241 people died when the Air India plane came down shortly after takeoff in June. Investigators have sensationally revealed there is "clear evidence" that the Jeju Air pilots mistakenly shut down the wrong engine after a bird strike. The plane was then forced to make an emergency landing at Muan International Airport on December 29, where it slammed into a concrete wall and burst into a fireball. Meanwhile, the leading theory in the Air India crash is that the pilot manually flipped both guarded fuel switches to the 'cut-off' position — a move aviation experts say could only have been deliberate. A report from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of India (AAIB) revealed a recording of the panicked co-pilot asking which the main pilot shut off the engines. Terry Tozer, former airline pilot and author of "Confessions of an Airline Pilot – Why Planes Crash", told The Sun that it would have been be possible for the Air India pilot to shut off the engines without the other noticing. In the cockpit were Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder. Terry said: "The handling pilot, which we know was the First Officer, would have had his hands full. "He would have had his hands on the controls, but the monitoring pilot [Sumeet] would have his hands free." "There is absolutely no procedure or logical reason why you would shut the engines off just after takeoff. That's so blindingly obvious that it doesn't need to be stated. "So either it happened by accident, which I think a lot of people find extremely hard to believe or it was done deliberately." Terry said that the switches are "latched", meaning you have to lift them up before you can move them. Despite the safety mechanism, Terry said it would 'probably' have been possible for one pilot to shut down the engines without the monitoring pilot noticing, because the switches "would be kind of behind his natural line of sight". The experience pilot also called on investigators to release a key piece of evidence that could clear up what happened in India. 8 8 He explained the area microphone on the cockpit voice recorder would have picked up the sound of the switches being flicked. Terry said: 'So it would have been helpful if the investigators had said whether or not they were able to tell whether a switch type sound was detectable around about the time that they think the switches might have been switched off.' Speaking about the Jeju crash, Terry said the pilots "obviously" shut down the wrong engine by "mistake" - but revealed they would have been contending with a chaos in the cockpit. He said: 'They probably would have had all kinds of bells and whistles going off and lots of indications that both engines were in trouble.' The former pilot said "takes time to analyze whether or not you should shut down one or neither or both" - but this was time the Jeju pilots did not have. He also said the new revelations about those crucial moments had been revealed in a "very odd manner". Terry said: "I understand that it was released to the relatives of the victims and in private, prior to release to the general public. "And then that causes riots and chaos." 8 8 However, Terry said that whatever happened in the two cockpits, there is one factor that determines passengers' fate above all else. He said the 'single most important thing' in passenger safety is the "airline culture". Terry explained: 'If it is a disciplined professional safety culture with a good training regime, then that makes a huge difference.' Terry recalled a similar occasion when the wrong engine was shut down - the Kegworth air disaster of 1989 - and said that was "definitely a cultural problem in the training department'. 'That may have been a factor with Jeju Air,' he said. In the wake of the two tragedies, many aviation figures have called for he introduction of cockpit CCTV. That would clear up immediately how the two engines came to be shut off on the Air India flight - but Terry said pilots would push back. He said: 'I can see why the investigators might welcome cockpit CCTV. "We should be doing everything we can to minimize crashes. 'And in any responsible environment, with a good airline and a regulatory environment that is already happening. "And obviously, if there was a video evidence of what went on on the cockpit. They would know the answers pretty clearly by now. "But it's something that I think pilots would resist, for the simple reason that they're already scrutinized, trained, checked, examined, monitored, regulated so much."
