A preliminary assessment by US investigators suggests the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad last month may have cut off fuel supply to the aircraft’s engines, contributing to the accident that killed 260 people.
According to a source quoted by the Reuters news agency, cockpit voice recordings indicate the first officer questioned the captain’s decision to move the fuel switches, which appeared to starve the engines. The first officer, who was piloting the Boeing 787 at the time, reportedly asked the captain why he altered the switches and requested they be returned to their original position.
While there is no video footage clearly showing who moved the switches, investigators believe the audio evidence points to the captain’s actions, the source said.
The crash, which occurred on June 12 shortly after take-off, is the deadliest aviation disaster in over a decade. Of the 242 people on board, 241 were killed along with 19 individuals on the ground when the aircraft crashed into a medical college campus.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the probe, has urged caution against premature conclusions. In a statement on Thursday, the AAIB criticised “selective and unverified reporting” by sections of the international media and emphasised that the investigation remains ongoing.
A preliminary report released by the AAIB last week revealed that one pilot asked the other why the fuel had been cut off, to which the other replied that he had not done so. The report did not assign the dialogue to either Captain Sumeet Sabharwal or First Officer Clive Kunder.
The switches for both engines had been moved from “run” to “cutoff” within a second of each other shortly after take-off, but the report did not specify how or why this occurred. CCTV footage showed deployment of the aircraft’s ram air turbine—an emergency backup power source—indicating an engine power failure almost immediately after lift-off.
Though the engines attempted an automatic restart after the switches were returned to “run”, the aircraft lacked the necessary altitude and airspeed to recover. It hit trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball, killing nearly everyone on board.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, in an internal memo on Monday, noted that the AAIB’s preliminary findings indicated no mechanical or maintenance issues, and all required maintenance had been up to date. The report did not include safety recommendations for Boeing or engine maker GE.
Following the release of the findings, the US Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing reaffirmed the safety of the fuel switch locking mechanisms in their aircraft.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is assisting the AAIB, confirmed that its chair, Jennifer Homendy, had been fully briefed on the investigation. The NTSB has helped review both the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
“The safety of international air travel depends on learning as much as we can from these rare events so that industry and regulators can improve aviation safety,” Homendy said. “And if there are no immediate safety issues discovered, we need to know that as well.”
Aviation safety expert John Nance said the available evidence increasingly suggests that a crew member manually cut fuel to both engines. “There’s no other rational explanation based on what we’ve seen so far,” he said, while cautioning that all possible contributing factors must still be examined.
The incident has reignited global debate over the need for cockpit video recordings. Nance noted that such footage could have offered investigators crucial visual confirmation of events in the flight deck.
