Ahmedabad air crash: Inside the 10-second mystery - What really brought down AI 171?

Time of India

4 days ago

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NEW DELHI: The fatal crash of Air India Flight AI 171 has drawn intense attention to a brief but pivotal sequence in the cockpit—ten seconds that may explain how a routine takeoff ended in disaster.
As investigators dig into the timeline, a Bloomberg report says that the unexplained actions and delays during this window are now central to understanding what went wrong with Boeing's advanced 787 Dreamliner.
On June 12, Flight AI 171 departed Ahmedabad for London with 242 people on board. Both pilots, senior captain Sumeet Sabharwal and junior co-pilot Clive Kunder, were cleared for duty and the aircraft's initial climb appeared normal.
But within seconds, a sudden loss of engine power set off a chain of events that the crew could not recover from, despite their efforts.
The unexplained 10 seconds
• Just three seconds after takeoff, the 787 Dreamliner reached its maximum recorded airspeed.
• Both engine fuel switches were inexplicably set to cutoff within a single second, shutting down fuel flow to the engines.
• Confusion erupted in the cockpit, with each pilot denying responsibility for moving the fuel switches, according to Bloomberg's reporting.
• There was a 10-second delay before the first fuel switch was reset, and another four seconds before the second was restored.
• The aircraft was too low and slow for the engines to be reignited in time to regain thrust.
•The significance of the ensuing 10-second delay cannot be overstated. As retired FAA inspector Michael Daniel told Bloomberg, 'The 10 seconds are crucial because the aircraft was simply too low and too slow to re-ignite the engines to gain thrust in order to climb.'
• The sudden shutdown triggered a barrage of cockpit alarms, possibly causing a psychological 'startle effect' and momentary freeze in pilot response.
• Emergency systems like the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) provided minimal power, but only to the captain's controls, forcing a rapid transfer of control from co-pilot to captain.
• Despite resetting the switches, the crew ran out of time; a 'Mayday' was sent, but the plane crashed just outside the airport, killing 260 people.
The preliminary report, as cited by Bloomberg, has left investigators with more questions than answers. While Air India's CEO said that fleet-wide safety checks found no anomalies, the focus remains on what happened inside the cockpit during those critical seconds. Human factors—including confusion, sensory overload, and psychological shock—are now under close scrutiny, as experts seek to determine whether these played a critical role in the delay that doomed the flight.