Air India Crash Cause Still a Mystery

"The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording."

"Let the investigation team investigate in detail; wait and have patience until the time the final report comes." 

"Assigning blame before a thorough, transparent and data-driven investigation is both premature and irresponsible."

"Such speculative commentary undermines the professionalism of highly trained crew members, [and] causes undue distress to their families and colleagues."

Charanvir Singh Randhawa, president, Federation of Indian Pilots

 

"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." 

"And if there are no immediate safety issues discovered, we need to know that as well."

Jennifer Homendy, chair, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board 

 

"In the balance between privacy and safety, the scale tips toward safety, unequivocally."

"Protecting the flying public is a sacred obligation."

Air safety expert and former commercial airline pilot John Nance 

 

"[If one of the pilots was responsible for shutting down the switches, intentionally or not, it ] does beg the question: why." 

"Was it intentional, or the result of confusion? That seems unlikely, as the pilots reported nothing unusual."

"In many cockpit emergencies, pilots may press the wrong buttons or make incorrect selections - but there was no indication of such a situation here, nor any discussion suggesting that the fuel switches were selected by mistake."

"This kind of error doesn't typically happen without some evident issue." 

Shawn Pruchnicki, former airline accident investigator and aviation expert, Ohio State University

A police officer stands in front of the wreckage of an Air India aircraft, bound for London's Gatwick Airport, which crashed during take-off from an airport in Ahmedabad, India June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

"The finding is very disturbing - that a pilot has shut off the fuel switch within seconds of flying."

"There's likely much more on the cockpit voice recorder than what's been shared. A lone remark like 'why did you cut off the switches' isn't enough."

"The new details suggest someone in the cockpit shut those valves. The question is, who, and why? Both switches were turned off and then restarted within seconds."

"The voice recorder will reveal more: was the flying pilot trying to restart the engines, or the monitoring one?"

"They haven't identified the voices yet, which is crucial. Typically, when the voice recorder is reviewed, people familiar with the pilots are present to help match voices. As of now, we still don't know which pilot turned the switches off and back on."

Peter Goelz, a former managing director, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board

 

Wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane sits on the open ground, outside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, where it took off and crashed nearby shortly afterwards, in Ahmedabad, India July 12, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave

 

Much hinges on the cockpit voice recording of Air India Flight 171. So far it would appear that the  younger co-pilot asked his experienced colleague why he had turned off the plane's fuel-supply switches. People involved with the investigation, asking to remain anonymous as not being authorized to speak on the matter, have revealed who said what in the flight deck, an exchange first referred to in the preliminary report presented last week from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, probing the June 12 crash in the western city of Ahmedabad.

 

According to the report, two fuel switches in the cockpit had been moved to a cut-off position, the cause of the Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner losing lift and crashing 32 seconds following takeoff. The pilot being questioned denied having turned the switches off, according to the AAIB, regarding the extracted data from the cockpit voice recorder. 

 

Speculation by aviation experts was that first officer Clive Kunder had posed the question to captain Sumeet Sabharwal. Kunder has been identified as flying the plane, and as such would have had his hands full; one on the yoke commanding the widebody passenger jet into the skies, the other on the throttle controlling the speed of the aircraft. It was the Wall Street Journal that had reported previously who was responsible in the exchange of having shut off the fuel-supply switches.

 

The fuel-control switches were turned off immediately the plane departed, an event identified through the initial investigation. And although the move was reversed some 10 seconds afterward, it was too late to amend the situation, leading to the June 12 crash that killed 260 people aboard, with one miraculous survivor. "What does this [bit in the report] exactly mean? Does it mean that with a single flip, that switch could shut the engine off and cut the fuel supply? When the locking feature is disengaged, what exactly happens? Could the switch just flip itself to off and shut down the engine? If that's the case, it's a really serious issue. If not, that also needs to be explained", questioned Mr Pruchnicki.

 

The two shut-off switches are located at the lower end of the centre console between the two pilot seats, near the thrust levers, designed in such a way as to prevent unintended movement -- with metal guards on either side of the knobs and the switches themselves with a spring-loaded locking mechanism that require a pull-up motion to change position. How and why the switches were turned off that cut the flow of fuel to the engines represent the key lines of inquiry for investigators; whether the result of a failure of the plane's systems or deliberate human action.

 

"At this stage, it is too early to reach to any definite conclusions. The investigation by AAIB is still not complete", cautioned the AAIB -- not to leap to premature conclusions and to await the final report that would include root causes and recommendations. Critical to the investigation is that the mic positions might have captured and discerned the direction from which the sound of the fuel switches had been turned off, in which case definitive information could be deciphered regarding who cut off the fuel supply to the plane's engines.

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with U.S. officials' early assessment of evidence, the first officer had expressed surprise that the fuel switches were off and then panicked. The captain, on the other hand, seemed calm, according to the report. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, assisting on the investigation, referred questions to the Indian authorities. The Airline Pilots' Association of India is indignant at the preliminary finding appearing to find human action as the cause of the doomed plane's crash.