I desperately want to know what that button was.
Between April 2016 and March 2018, he was employed as a pilot by BA CityFlyer, operating out of London’s City Airport, and by the now-collapsed Irish regional airline Stobart Air, which was owned by Aer Lingus. He was with each carrier for a year, per court documents reported by the newspaper.
Officials at BA CityFlyer first became suspicious after an incident “on the ground” in Switzerland when the pilot pressed a button “no qualified pilot would,” a source told The Times, without providing further details.
He was investigated by the CAA, which took legal action.
The Times reported that the pilot manipulated the log recording his flight hours while working for a previous employer, Hangar 8 Management, which operates the same Embraer 190 jet as BA CityFlyer. He also falsely said he’d held a private pilot’s licence since 1998, according to court documents quoted by The Times.
My retired USAF maintenance friend thinks it was the ATG Deployment switch. Air Turbine Generators are only deployed in flight when power failure occurs and must be restowed on the ground by maintenance.
Or retract the landing gear when the plane is still on the ground.