Air India plane crashed after fuel supply to engines was cut off: Probe

The Air India jetliner that crashed on June 12 almost immediately after taking off plummeted back to the ground because fuel supply was cut off to both engines and the pilots failed to regain thrust in time to avert the catastrophe, a preliminary report found.

The findings, issued a month after the accident that killed 241 occupants of the Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner and 19 people on the ground, laid out the fateful final seconds before the plane plunged into a densely populated district in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

According to a chronology laid out in the report, the fuel switches of both engines were moved to the cut-off position almost immediately after takeoff. It’s unclear what prompted that maneuver. According to the report, one unidentified pilot asked the other why he had cut off the fuel, which he denied, as per a transcript of the cockpit voice recording.

About 10 seconds after the fuel cut-off, the switches were moved back in quick succession to their so-called run position. The pilots managed to relight both engines, but only one of them properly engaged, while the other failed to build up enough power again.

One of the pilots issued a “mayday, mayday, mayday” distress call just a few seconds before impact. Before air traffic controllers could get a response about what had gone wrong, the plane crashed just outside the airport boundary having grazed some trees before plunging into a hostel packed with students.

Between takeoff and the crash, only about 30 seconds had passed.

“We now know — with some degree of confidence — that both engines rolled back because these fuel switches were activated,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the US Federal Aviation Administration. “We just don’t know why or how these switches were activated and that’s going to be a big part of this investigation.”

The report, while preliminary, paints a harrowing picture of a doomed jetliner. The findings leave unanswered who, if anyone, moved the switches that starved the aircraft of fuel. The investigators also said that it found no evidence so far that would require them to take actions over the Boeing aircraft or the GE Aerospace engines powering it.

“At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers,” according to the report from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.

While the report details the final seconds in the cockpit and other sequences of the flight, the report provides only a limited picture of the interaction between the two pilots in the flight deck. There was no mention of other conversations beyond the brief query about the switches. The report didn’t detail each pilots actions.

The report showed charred images of control elements like landing gear and thrust levers and the flight recorders.

The report highlighted a FAA airworthiness bulletin from 2018 that said that fuel control switches on Boeing planes including the 737 and the 787 could inadvertently move from run to cutoff without their locking mechanism engaging. The Air India jet was not inspected for the locking mechanism fault as it was never mandatory.

The investigation is continuing and the team will examine additional evidence, records and information, the AAIB bureau added. A full report that will seek to determine the cause of the incident will take months to compile.

The people conducting the probe are also looking at the backgrounds and experience of the pilots — a normal step for this kind of investigation. The aircraft was in the command of captain Sumeet Sabharwal and first officer Clive Kunder, who had about 8,500 and roughly 1,100 flight hours on the 787, respectively, according to the report.

According to the report, the co-pilot was in charge of flying the aircraft, while the pilot in command was assigned to monitoring.

Aerospace engineer and fighter pilot Bjorn Fehrm said it was unusual that it took the crew so long to put the switches back into the run position.

“It’s just strange,” Fehrm said in an interview. “I would never, ever wait 10 seconds to put them on again. I would put them on in a jiffy.”

Moving the switches into a cut-off position during flight is usually done only in emergency situations, such as an engine fire or failure.

The National Transportation Safety Board referred any questions to Indian authorities. Air India said it’s unable to comment on specific details of the investigation and it was cooperating with officials. Boeing said it continues to support the investigation and Air India and referred questions to the AAIB.

The agency’s report is based on an examination of data extracted from the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder and other details gathered from the scene of the crash, the worst aviation accident in more than a decade.


The report marks the first official explanation for the disaster, which has thrown the Indian carrier into crisis just as it worked on a turnaround under the new ownership of the Tata Group.

Boeing has also kept a low public profile in the wake of the catastrophe, as the US planemaker became associated with another aircraft mishap.

The Boeing 787 was bound for London and the crash marked the first ever complete loss of that aircraft type.