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www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 9 AIR INDIA CRASH July 18, 2025 Unexpected Fuel Cutoff Preceded Air India Plane Crash, Preliminary Report Says I ndian investigators probing the crash of Air India flight 171 said that both engines stopped receiving fuel shortly after takeoff in a preliminary report docu- menting their findings regarding the nation’s worst airline crash in decades. The new details from India’s Aircraft Accident Inves- tigation Bureau about the June 12 crash indicate that the switches controlling fuel to both engines entered the cutoff position early into the flight, causing the plane to lose thrust. The switches were later flipped back into the run position, a standard procedure for restarting the engines mid-flight. Audio from the cockpit suggests both pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting. “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff,” write the report’s authors. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so.” The switches have safeguards designed to stop them being inadvertently moved. “Each switch has a mechanical lock where you have lift the switch up and then move it, so it’s highly unlikely for switches like this to be inadvertently moved absent some mechanical failure,” said Jeff Guzzetti, the former director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Accident Investi- gation Division. It is also unusual that both switches inadvertently moved to the cutoff position “one right after another, one second apart,” Guzzetti added. Guzzetti did not rule out the possibility the switches may have been intentionally moved, citing the need to also investigate the pilots. The preliminary report was released around 1 a.m. local time Saturday. The investigation is still in its early stages and is not likely to be complete for more than a year. The Boeing 787 took off from Ahmedabad airport in western India before crashing down into a dormitory at a medical college, causing a massive fireball. All but one of the 242 people on the plane were killed, as were 19 people on the ground. One passenger made a miraculous escape from the doomed jet. The airliner was bound for London’s Gatwick Airport. The plane appeared to roll down the runway and take off normally, according to experts who have reviewed videos from the scene. But after just a few seconds in the air, the jet stopped climbing. The pilots transmitted a mayday call 23 seconds after the first switch flipped into the cutoff position, according to the report. The plane’s landing gear remained down and video and audio suggests an emergency device known as a ram air turbine, or RAT, had deployed on the plane, experts have said, potentially evidence of a rare double engine failure. The device drops from the bottom of an aircraft, spinning as it moves through the air to provide emer- gency power. But in the weeks since the crash it has remained unclear what might have ultimately caused the plane to crash. Aviation news site The Air Current reported this week that investigators were focusing on the movement of fuel switches on the flight deck, citing people famil- iar with the probe. The switches are typically used to control the flow of fuel when starting and stopping the engine, but they can also be used if an engine needs to be restarted in flight. The findings issued Friday are required under interna- tional standards governing crash investigations. But they are a summary of facts available to investigators and do not include conclusions about why the crash happened. It is likely to take investigators a year or more to com- plete their work. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is leading a team of Americans aiding the probe, but responsibility for releasing information remains with Indian officials. The report’s authors note that they make no recom- mendations to Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane, or General Electric, the maker of the engine. Authorities typically provide regular briefings to the public immediately after serious crashes, but in the case of the Air India crash little official information had been shared. That left a void filled in some cases by misin- formation and it stoked concern among international safety experts that the lack of transparency would make it difficult for other airlines to know whether there were any broader safety risks that needed to be urgently addressed. The investigation got off to a slow start. The plane’s black boxes, which record conversations between the pilots and log data from the jet’s systems, were recovered from the wreckage in the days after the crash. But investi- gators did not begin to analyze data from them until June 24 at a lab in Delhi. The information in the boxes will be vital to investigators as they piece together what went wrong. The crash was the first involving a 787, a fuel-efficient Boeing jet first put into service in 2011. The new planes were briefly grounded in 2013 due to a battery fire but have had a good safety record in the years since. Indian aviation authorities launched a broader review in the immediate aftermath of the crash and stepped up their oversight of the nation’s airlines. They found cases of improper maintenance procedures and a flight with worn tires. But they did not find any evidence of broader risks to Air India’s 787 fleet. “This preliminary report answers some questions, but it poses other questions,” Guzzetti said.. -TheWashington Post By Ian Duncan, Joshua Yang PHOTOS:Siddharaj Solanki/Bloomberg The crash site of Air India Ltd. Flight 171 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, on Friday, June 13, 2025. Amid Air India Probe, US FAA, Boeing Notify Fuel Switch Locks Are Safe, Document, Sources Say -WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI/MONTREAL T he U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing have privately issued notifications that the fuel switch locks on Boeing planes are safe, a document seen by Reuters showed and four sources with knowledge of the matter said. The FAA’s Continued Airworthiness Notification on July 11 came after a preliminary report on Friday into last month’s Boeing 787-8 crash, which killed 260 people, raised questions over engine fuel cutoff switches. The FAA’s notification to Civil Aviation Authorities, seen by Reuters, said: “although the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar on various Boeing airplane models, the FAA does not consider this issue to be an unsafe condition that would warrant an Airworthiness Directive on any Boeing airplane models, including the Model 787.” When asked for comment, the FAA said it did not have anything to add beyond the notification. Boeing also referred to FAA’s notification in a Multi- Operator-Message sent to the airlines in the past few days, which said the planemaker is not recommending any action, two of the sources with direct knowledge said. When asked for comment, Boeing referred Reuters’ questions to the FAA. The preliminary investigation report into the crash by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), referred to a 2018 FAA advisory, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of the fuel cutoff switches to ensure it could not be moved ac- cidentally. The report said Air India had said it had not carried out the FAA’s suggested inspections as the FAA 2018 advisory was not a mandate. The report noted “all applicable airworthiness direc- tives and alert service bulletins were complied on the aircraft as well as engines.” ALPA India, which represents Indian pilots at the Montreal-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations, in a statement on Saturday rejected the presumption of pilot error and called for on a “fair, fact-based inquiry.” “The pilots body must now be made part of the probe, at least as observers,” ALPA India President SamThomas told Reuters on Sunday. ALPA India, in a letter posted on X, said the pre- liminary investigation report referred to the 2018 FAA advisory “concerning the fuel control switch gates, which indicates a potential equipment malfunction.” In the flight’s final moments, one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said. It said fuel switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff just after takeoff. The report did not say how the switches could have flipped during the flight. Two U.S. safety experts said on Saturday they backed ALPA India’s request to be observers in the probe, but said the investigation report did not suggest a bias toward pilot error. John Cox, a pilot and former ALPA representative, said AAIB’s report seemed objective and fair. -Reuters By David Shepardson, Abhijith Ganapavaram and Allison Lampert