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AAIB rejects report claiming pilot's ‘intentional act’ behind Air India crash: ‘Speculative'
The central agency said that the investigation into the Air India crash is still in progress and no final conclusions have been reached.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Thursday dismissed as “incorrect and speculative” reports claiming that the investigation into the Air India Flight AI-171 crash has been finalised.
The central agency said that the investigation into the Air India crash is still in progress and no final conclusions have been reached.
The response from AAIB, which is under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, comes a day after Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, denied any technical fault in the aircraft's fuel switches and suggested an “intentional act” behind turning off the fuel switches of the Air India Flight 171.
The Italian report, citing sources in western aviation agencies, said that the probe into the crash is heading towards its completion and that the plane crashed because one of the pilots turned off the two fuel switches.
The AAIB clarified that the claim that the probe into the crash has been finalised are incorrect and speculative. “The investigation is still in progress. No final conclusions have been reached,” it added.
Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed near Ahmedabad airport on June 12, 2025, shortly after takeoff, killing 260 people — 241 of the 242 on board — when the aircraft plummeted onto a medical student hostel 32 seconds after losing thrust from both engines.
The investigation body referred to its preliminary report on the crash, saying, “The Final Investigation Report, containing conclusions and safety recommendations, will be published upon completion of the investigation in line with established international norms.”
In its preliminary 15-page report, published a month after the crash, the AAIB provided the details the final moments of the crash, without providing the cause behind the simultaneous dual-engine failure.
The report said that the fuel cutoff switches was shifted from the 'RUN' position to the 'CUTOFF' position almost simultaneously, within a second of each other. According to the report, one pilot was heard asking the other on the cockpit voice recording, “Why did you cut off?” The other pilot responded, “I did not do so. "
However, the mystery remains of what led to the two engines losing fuel simultaneously.
What did the Italian report said on AI crash probe?
The Corriere della Sera report said the Indian investigators are preparing to state in their final probe report that Flight 171 crashed because one of the pilots turned off the aircraft's fuel switches in an “intentional act”.
The report said that the findings were based on analysis of cleaned-up cockpit voice recordings that identified which pilot moved the fuel switch “from RUN to CUTOFF”.
Ruling out the possibility of a mistake, the report said the audio analysis made clear which pilot took the fatal action. Though the report has not explicitly pin responsibility, the name at the centre of it all is the aircraft's pilot commander, Sumeet Sabharwal, who died in the crash.
