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Air India crash: Fuel switches abruptly moving to 'cut-off' may have triggered calamity, reveals AAIB preliminary report
The technicalities of the devastating Air India crash on June 12 are slowly being unearthed — but any emotional resolution seems to be far off
A month since India's worst aviation accident in decades, answers of a vague nature have finally began trickling in to explain Air India flight 171's crash on June 12 this year. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner was airborne for less than 40 seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, before it nosedived into the hostel block of the city's B. J. Medical College. The catastrophe saw only 1 survivor, Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, with the remaining 229 passengers on board, 12 crew members perishing. The on-ground casualties for the crash was estimated to be 19, bringing the total death toll to 260.
In the early hours of July 12, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau released its 15-page preliminary report, which reveals the trigger behind the crash to be quite ominous and inexplicable. As per cockpit voice recordings retrieved, one pilot realised that the fuel switches, set to 'run' when a plane takes off and is airborne, had been switched to 'cut-off'. This prompted him to ask the other pilot, "Why did you cut off?", to which the latter replied, "I did not do so". For clarity, the fuel switches of a plane are set to 'cut-off' following the plane's landing and at no point in-between.
Aviation expert John Cox has weighed in on the situation via Reuters, clarifying that a pilot could not accidentally move the fuel switches. The seemingly foolproof mechanism is actually much more nuanced. A BBC report outlines that the fuel switches are actually safeguarded with a lever-lock mechanism, specifically designed to prevent accidental activation. Speaking to them, a Canada-based air accidents investigator further affirmed, "It would be almost impossible to pull both switches with a single movement of one hand, and this makes accidental deployment unlikely".
Following the crash, Boeing, owing to its growing history of faulty aircraft, came under severe backlash. Their official statement on the matter so far reads, "We will defer to the AAIB to provide information about AI171, in adherence with the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization protocol known as Annex 13".
