Fuel switches were not faulty, says Air India, adding to pilot blame
Air India found no problems with the locking mechanism of the fuel control switch of all Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft in its fleet, the spokesman said.
The captain of the crashed jet is likely to have cut off the fuel supply before it went down in Ahmedabad, US officials believe.
The first officer, who was flying the Boeing 787-9, questioned why the captain had moved switches to the cut-off position, according to a US assessment of the black box data.
He reportedly expressed surprise and panic while the captain remained calm, the Wall Street Journal reported.
All but one of 242 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were killed when the aircraft plunged into a medical student hostel in a built-up suburb last month, less than a minute after take-off from Ahmedabad airport.
In response to the tragedy, India's aviation regulator ordered airlines to check fuel switches on Boeing jets after a preliminary report released by Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that switches controlling fuel flow to the jet's two engines were turned off, leading to a catastrophic loss of thrust at take-off.
The switches were moved in succession, one second apart, according to the report. Some 10 seconds later, the switches were turned back on. The report did not say whether the switches may have been turned off accidentally or deliberately.
The findings explain why the jet's emergency-power generator, known as a ram air turbine, appeared to have been activated moments before it plummeted to the ground.
While the initial report does not draw any conclusion, it has raised questions about the actions of Sumeet Sabharwal, the lead pilot, and Clive Kundar, the co-pilot, who had more than 19,000 hours of flying time between them.
In the moments before the disaster, Captain Sabharwal, 56, issued a mayday call. However, after the aircraft reached a maximum altitude of barely 400ft above the runway all contact was lost. The plane then glided down towards the ground and crashed into an explosion of fire.
The Telegraph previously revealed that Air India crash investigators were examining the medical records of Mr Sabharwal amid claims that he suffered from depression and mental health problems.
Captain Sabharwal had been considering leaving the airline to look after his elderly father following the death of his mother in 2022.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving Boeing's Dreamliner.
However, the airline had already suffered reputational damage after a string of safety and quality problems.
The Dreamliner, which entered service in 2011, is popular among commercial airlines and is commonly used on international long-haul routes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BreakingNews.ie
34 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Remains of some Air India crash victims wrongly identified, lawyer says
The repatriated remains of some of the British victims of the Air India crash were wrongly identified, a lawyer has said, with grieving families left struggling to say goodbye to their loved ones. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a medical college shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport on June 12th, killing 241 people on board. Advertisement Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed. Officials inspect the site of the crash (Ajit Solanki/AP) Aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt, whose firm Keystone Law is representing more than 20 British families who lost loved ones in the disaster, said relatives of one victim found out a casket contained 'co-mingled' remains, while a different family were told a coffin contained the body of someone else entirely, not their loved one. Mr Healy-Pratt, who is a partner at the firm, said the mistakes emerged after the 'sterling efforts' of senior coroner for Inner West London, Dr Fiona Wilcox, who 'picked up DNA anomalies' at the beginning of the repatriations. 'In the first two caskets that were repatriated, in one of the caskets, there was co-mingling of DNA which did not relate to the deceased in that casket or the casket that accompanied it, and so that's what alerted her and her team to the fact there was a serious problem,' he told the PA news agency. Advertisement 'My understanding was that the co-mingling was at the very beginning, which alerted Dr Wilcox to the fact that she had to be 100% assiduous about checking the identification of the incoming remains. 'She was then able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were.' The family of three British victims who were buried in India after the crash said there was a 'clear lack of transparency and accountability' in how the identification and repatriation of victims was handled. Relatives of Akeel Nanabawa, his wife Hannaa Vorajee and their four-year-old daughter Sara Nanabawa said in a statement: 'Recent developments have only confirmed what many feared: that serious mistakes may have been made, and that the dignity and rights of victims and their families were not safeguarded as they should have been. Advertisement 'In our case, we are confident that we received the correct bodies, based on the hospital's assurances, autopsy reports, their clothing and the personal belongings we recovered. 'But our concern now is not limited to ourselves. We are deeply troubled by what this means for other families who may still be searching for certainty and closure. 'This isn't just a personal tragedy; it is a collective one. And the mishandling of such a sensitive process speaks to a wider failure between the British and Indian authorities to act with care, co-ordination and respect.' It is understood no blame is being put on any UK agency for the blunders, Mr Healy-Pratt told PA. Advertisement 'We know that they were not allowed anywhere near the DNA identification chain of custody link to the caskets,' he said. 'That was the Indian authorities, that's what we understand. 'But nobody's actually laid that out formally for families to look at and review, and that's what we want – explanations by the Indian government about who was in charge of that chain of custody, why were there the massive mistakes that were made and, the important thing, how do the families know that there aren't other remains of their loved ones in a fridge in an Indian hospital?' The lawyer said he believes the mistakes will be on the agenda for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's talks with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Wednesday and Thursday. Mr Healy-Pratt added: 'Somebody has to take responsibility in India for this massive screw up and then they actually have to ensure that they can give proper assurances to the families that the job has been completed and done properly. Advertisement 'The hierarchy of needs of these families in air crashes, it's always the same. 'The first thing they want is their loved ones back so they can say goodbye to them; the second thing is they want to know how their loved ones died; third thing, they want to prevent further deaths so that all depends on getting number two right; and then number four, it will be some form of financial justice.' His firm has demanded a written explanation from Air India, including on the involvement of their contractors, Kenyon International Emergency Services. PA has approached Air India's parent company, the Tata Group, and Kenyon Emergency Services for comment, as well as No 10 and the British Foreign Office. A preliminary report into the crash found the plane's fuel switches were cut off (Ajit Solanki/AP) Mr Healy-Pratt understands 12 bodies have been repatriated to the UK. He is investigating the identification mistakes but is also tasked with representing families at inquests, investigating the causes of the accident, taking High Court legal action in England against Air India and taking action against Boeing in the US courts. Besides those on board AI171, another 19 people also died, and 67 were seriously injured. The only surviving passenger on the plane was Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who previously told The Sun it was a 'miracle' he was alive but felt 'terrible' he could not save his brother Ajay. A preliminary report into the incident from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found both of the plane's fuel switches moved to the 'cut-off' position 'immediately' after take-off, stopping fuel supply to the engine. It has sparked questions over whether the crash was deliberate.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Teacher dies saving students from inferno in Bangladesh jet crash
DHAKA, July 23 (Reuters) - When a Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet crashed into her school and erupted in a fireball on Monday, Maherin Chowdhury rushed to save some of the hundreds of students and teachers facing mortal danger, placing their safety before her own. The 46-year-old English teacher went back again and again into a burning classroom to rescue her students, even as her own clothes were engulfed in flames, her brother, Munaf Mojib Chowdhury, told Reuters by telephone. Maherin died on Monday after suffering near total burns on her body. She is survived by her husband and two teenaged sons. "When her husband called her, pleading with her to leave the scene and think of her children, she refused, saying 'they are also my children, they are burning. How can I leave them?'" Chowdhury said. At least 29 people, most of them children, were killed when the F-7 BGI crashed into the school, trapping them in fire and debris. The military said the aircraft had suffered mechanical failure. "I don't know exactly how many she saved, but it may have been at least 20. She pulled them out with her own hands," he said, adding that he found out about his sister's act of bravery when he visited the hospital and met students she had rescued. The jet had taken off from a nearby air base on a routine training mission, the military said. After experiencing mechanical failure the pilot tried to divert the aircraft away from populated areas, but it crashed into the campus. The pilot was among those killed. "When the plane crashed and fire broke out, everyone was running to save their lives, she ran to save others," Khadija Akter, the headmistress of the school's primary section, told Reuters on phone about Maherin. She was buried on Tuesday in her home district of Nilphamari, in northern Bangladesh.
.jpeg%3Ftrim%3D0%2C0%2C0%2C0%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
6 hours ago
- The Independent
Fire breaks out on Air India's flight from Hong Kong after landing in Delhi
Air India grounded an aircraft for inspection after a fire broke out in its auxiliary power unit, or APU, shortly after landing in New Delhi on Tuesday. The fire was detected while passengers were disembarking flight AI315 from Hong Kong, the airline said in a statement. 'The incident occurred while passengers had begun disembarking and the APU was automatically shut down as per system design,' an airline spokesperson said. The APU is installed at the rear of the aircraft and serves as a backup power source. It is primarily used to start the main engines and operate critical onboard systems while the aircraft is on the ground. Passengers de-boarded safely but the aircraft, which landed in Delhi at 12.31pm local time, was damaged, the airline said. Flight tracking service Flightradar24 identified the affected aircraft as an Airbus A321. This was the third Air India scare in two days. A flight from the southern city of Kochi veered off a rain-soaked runway in Mumbai on Monday. All passengers got off safely but the aircraft's engine and runway infrastructure were damaged. The plane was grounded and both pilots de-rostered. A few hours later, flight AI2403 from Delhi to Kolkata aborted take-off at high speed after a technical issue was detected. The pilots stopped the aircraft, and all 160 passengers were safely disembarked. The flight was rescheduled for later in the evening. These incidents come amid heightened scrutiny of flight safety following last month's deadly Air India crash in Ahmedabad that killed 260 people. A preliminary investigation report released a month after the crash revealed the Boeing Dreamliner's fuel control switches flipped from 'run' position to 'cutoff' within seconds of the take-off. The report said that one of the pilots was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he had cut off the fuel. The other responded that he hadn't. The report caused an uproar with pilot associations accusing the investigators of indirectly blaming the pilots for the crash. A subsequent report in The Wall Street Journal suggested that pilot error could have played a role in the incident. However, Indian authorities condemned the report as speculative and irresponsible. Meanwhile, Air India said it found no problems with the fuel control switch mechanisms across its Boeing 787 and 737 fleet during inspections carried out after the Ahmedabad crash. India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau expects to give a final report detailing its investigation into the crash within a year.
