Interesting stuff - while we can only speculate until the investigation into the incident is complete, there is a passenger on that flight that said the pilot told him after landing that he lost control of his aircraft cause his “gauges went blank”… I am not sure that makes any sense. Even if multiple displays fail… I don’t see how that results in a severe plunge the aircraft experienced. Unless they were pilot-induced. How do you just “lose control” of an aircraft that is flying perfectly stable but experiences a display failure? I am looking forward to having some light illuminating what exactly happened there, but it’s not making a lot of sense right now.
I dont want to get into a large discussion or speculation but remember that the cockpit screens are at the far end of the chain and are driven from various computers, some controlling the flight. The A/C is fly by wire and one thing that any flight computer does if it sees a serious problem is remove the information from the screens (blank) to prevent mis information being displayed. This may have been what happened here. A failure sensed by a flight computer, removing the information to prevent misinformation. Other side affects is A/P disconnect etc. I have seen it personally in a 747-400 in night over sea with both ND’s going blank together for about 30 seconds. An FMC glitch caused this.
I have seen commentary that there was an issue identified in 2015 where if the aircraft was not completely power cycled every 248 days that there are 4 generators that can failover simultaneously at a certain specific elapsed timepoint before coming back on line. This should have been addressed in a software update (FAA AD).
Purely speculation however it does have similarities to other incidents of this type.
Intersting. I know on the Embraer 190 series, the A/c had to be de powered every so often or a huge number of checks done otherwise it refused to go anywhere.
The Aviation Herald website is a great source of information on the LATAM incident and others.
I can thoroughly recommend it:
Another potential cause, seems the most likely based on updated reporting.
To me this sounds like the good old problem of corrupted air data like the Qantas 72 years ago. Its the nature of the beast with highly computerized fbw aircraft. And these type of faults are difficult to catch during testing. They show up in real world use.
More reporting now (including WSJ) on flight attendant hitting the seat control while serving a meal. If true, lots of questions abound because the top of seat switch has a protective cover and even full forward stop should not make the pilot’s body push on the yoke.
I am concerned that LATAM immediately used the phrase “technical issue” in an official statement, which implies the plane is to blame when an honest pilot would have immediately reported the truth to their airline. This will get even more odd if “somehow” there is no CVR recording of the incident.
1 Like
I’m sure they very likely did. What the airline press department then puts out is anyone’s guess.
The guard for that switch can, and does, break but crew should know that the switch is there and obviously it shouldn’t be pushed
Bit of an odd one if it turns out this was the cause.
There is one hypothesis that would explain everything: how the switch might have been inadvertently activated, why it was so difficult to immediately stop the seat motion, why the yoke was moved by the body in the seat and why the crew may be inclined to cover the incident up and that hypothesis involves something other than a meal being served to the pilot 
It certainly looks like a strong possibility, but obviously it’s not official as yet.