Air India report: fuel switches cut off before plane crash
Amid confusion on the flight deck, the pilots reopened the fuel to restart the engines but it was too late. Deprived of power, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner sank to the ground 30 seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad for London on June 12, the preliminary report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said.
The fuel switches, which toggle between 'run' and 'cutoff', are used for the engine start and stop in every flight. They are positioned on the console between the pilots and are impossible to manipulate accidentally because they are guarded and require deliberate actions to move.
The aircraft took off normally but 'immediately thereafter, the engine one and engine two fuel cutoff switches transitioned from run to cutoff position one after another, with a time gap of 01 seconds,' the report said.
The co-pilot, Clive Kunder, was flying the aircraft with Captain Sumeet Sabharwal monitoring. 'In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,' the report said.
AMIT DAVE/REUTERS
The report did not identify which remarks were made by the captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted, 'mayday, mayday, mayday, losing thrust' just before the crash.
The preliminary report also does not say how the switch could have flipped to the cutoff position.
The switches were moved back to the normal position, starting the relighting sequence, but one of the engines failed to restart, ensuring the aircraft's doom, the report showed.
The fuel supply switches are only used in flight in an emergency to shut down an engine that is failing. 'These are sacred switches. We would never touch one of these in flight unless there was some very serious reason,' Ben Watts, a Boeing 737 pilot and instructor, said on a podcast after word of the engine shutdown leaked this week.
The report in effect exonerated Boeing after fears there may have been a flaw in the 787, the flagship product of the troubled US planemaker. Air India flight 171 was the first loss of one of its Dreamliners, which have been in service since 2011.
The investigation, which continues, has not yet found any significant faults with the aircraft.
John Cox, a US aviation safety expert, said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. 'You can't bump them and they move,' he said.
The report states: 'At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers, suggesting that no significant fault has been found with the plane or its engines.'
There were 242 people on board, including 53 British citizens, 169 Indian citizens, seven Portuguese, one Canadian and 12 crew on board. Only one passenger survived, the British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh. A total of 260 died in the incident, according to industry reports.
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