Fuel control switches for the engines of an Air India flight that crashed last month were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before impact, ravenous each engines of fuel, a preliminary investigation report said early Saturday.
The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, also indicated that each pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting, which caused a lack of engine thrust shortly after takeoff.
The Air India flight — a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — crashed on June 12 and killed a minimum of 260 people, including 19 on the bottom, within the northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Just one passenger survived the crash, which is one in every of India’s worst aviation disasters.
The plane was carrying 230 passengers — 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian — together with 12 crew members.
Based on the report, the flight lasted around 30 seconds between takeoff and crash. It said that when the aircraft achieved its top recorded speed, “the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after one other” inside a second. The report didn’t say how the switches could have flipped to the cutoff position through the flight.
The movement of the fuel control switches allows and cuts fuel flow to the plane’s engines.
The switches were flipped back into the run position, the report said, however the plane couldn’t gain power quickly enough to stop its descent after the aircraft had begun to lose altitude.
The report stated: “One in every of the pilots transmitted ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’.”
Get each day National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“The switch is designed to shut fuel off to the engines. And so, in case you operate it, that’s what it’s going to do. Additionally it is a part of a design to reset,” Terry Tozer, aviation expert and former airline pilot, told Sky News.
Tozer said in case of an engine failure “one in every of the actions within the non-normal checklist could be to recycle these switches from on to off and back to on again, which might initiate a restart, which is precisely what happened as designed.”
“Unfortunately, the altitude was so low that the engines were only starting to recuperate they usually didn’t have enough time,” Tozer said, adding that the engine cutoff switches being switched to off “only seconds after liftoff, is completely bizarre.”
The report also indicated confusion within the cockpit moments before the crash.
Within the flight’s final moment, one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the opposite why he cut off the fuel. “The opposite pilot responded that he didn’t achieve this,” the report said.
The preliminary report didn’t recommend any actions for Boeing, which said in an announcement that it “stands able to support the investigation led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.”
“Our deepest condolences exit to the family members of the passengers and crew on board Air India Flight 171, in addition to everyone affected in Ahmedabad,” the statement added.
India’s civil aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, said the report’s findings were preliminary and one mustn’t “jump into any conclusions on this.”
“Allow us to wait for the ultimate report,” Naidu told reporters.
Air India, in an announcement, said it’s fully cooperating with authorities investigating the crash.
“Air India is working closely with stakeholders, including regulators. We proceed to totally cooperate with the AAIB and other authorities as their investigation progresses,” it said.
The plane’s black boxes — combined cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders — were recovered in the times following the crash and later downloaded in India.
Indian authorities had also ordered deeper checks of Air India’s entire Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet to stop future incidents. Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.
© 2025 The Canadian Press