Air India junior pilot asked captain why he turned off fuel switches
The information, from people who asked not to be identified because they're not authorised to speak publicly, reveals for the first time who said what in the cockpit. A preliminary report from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau made public last week included a description of the exchange, including one pilot's denial that he turned off the switches, without identifying the individual speakers.
Aviation experts had speculated that it was first officer Clive Kunder who had posed the question to captain Sumeet Sabharwal, given Kunder was the pilot flying and would have had his hands full – one on the yoke commanding the widebody into the skies, and the other on the throttle controlling the aircraft's speed. The Wall Street Journal previously reported who said what in the exchange.
The initial investigation showed the fuel-control switches on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were turned off immediately after the plane departed. While the move was reversed about 10 seconds later, it was too late to avert the June 12 crash that killed 260 people on board the plane and on the ground in the city of Ahmedabad.
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How and why the switches came to be turned off – cutting the flow of fuel to the engines – are now the key lines of inquiry for investigators. Officials are probing whether it could be the result of a failure of the plane's systems or human error.
And while the new details add fresh perspective on the confusion in the cockpit during the 32 seconds between take-off and crash, investigators still haven't drawn any definitive conclusions.
Earlier this week, India's civil aviation authority ordered an inspection of cockpit fuel switches on Boeing 737 and 787 aircraft operating in the country in an effort to ascertain whether the crash was caused by equipment failure.
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