4 days ago
Air India crash preliminary report: A transparent probe is the least that is owed to the dead and their families
The preliminary report of the Air Accidents Investigation Board (AAIB) on the June 12 crash of Air India Flight 171, which killed 241 people on board and 19 on the ground in Ahmedabad, is only a first step in the search for answers. While the AAIB met the 30-day guideline in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation's rules, the 15-page report was released at the very last minute by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, in the early hours of Saturday. It says that the Boeing 787-8 aircraft's two-engine fuel control switches transitioned from Run to Cutoff position within a second of each other just after take-off. In the only bit of information released from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), one of the pilots is recorded asking the other why he cut off the fuel, to which the latter says that he did not. The switches were returned to the Run position, the report says, triggering automatic engine relight, but it was too late.
While the full and final report will be out in a year's time, what the AAIB report says — and what it doesn't say — has raised concerns. For instance, why does it include only a single paraphrased exchange between the pilots regarding fuel cut-off, and not the full CVR audio and transcript? Notably, it does not say that either pilot moved the fuel control switches during take-off; it merely notes that the switches 'transitioned from Run to Cutoff position'. Curiously, there has been no press briefing on the report during which questions could be addressed. Not surprisingly, the Airline Pilots' Association of India has criticised the ambiguity, calling it a premature insinuation of pilot error. The report mentions a 2018 Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which flagged that some Boeing 737s' fuel control switches had been installed with the locking feature disengaged — the 787 version has similar switches. As the SAIB was just an advisory, Air India did not carry out any inspections. In a welcome move, the DGCA has now asked airlines to inspect fuel switch locking systems in Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft. The report's concluding section says that it does not recommend any action on Boeing or General Electric. Meanwhile, in what appears to amount to a clean chit for both companies, the FAA has declared that the preliminary report 'found no urgent safety concerns' relating to either the engines or the aircraft systems of the 787-8. In this context, the case of the Boeing 737 MAX injects a necessary note of caution. Following the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019 — both linked to similar technical faults — the FAA had initially affirmed the aircraft's airworthiness, only to ground the entire 737 MAX fleet between March 2019 and December 2020.
It would be unwise to draw definitive conclusions from the preliminary report, which acknowledges in the foreword that the findings are provisional and subject to revision. Until the final report is out, all the agencies involved must take every possible measure to ensure a fair, transparent, and fact-based inquiry. That is the very least that is owed to the dead and their families — and the safety of passengers every day.
