Air India crash probe zeroes in on cockpit exchange, rules out mechanical fault; pilots' body raises concerns

A cockpit voice recording from last month’s Air India crash in Ahmedabad suggests that the captain may have cut off fuel supply to the engines shortly after take-off, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday. Citing sources familiar with the preliminary assessment by US investigators, the report says the first officer questioned the captain’s decision to switch the fuel controls to the "cutoff" position just seconds after the Boeing 787 Dreamliner lifted off the runway. The crash on June 12 claimed 260 lives. The pilots involved were Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, with 15,638 hours of flying experience, and First Officer Clive Kunder, who had logged 3,403 hours.

India's AAIB, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Air India and two unions representing Indian pilots did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the Wall Street Journal report. Boeing declined to comment.

A preliminary report into the crash released by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Saturday said the fuel switches had switched from run to cutoff a second apart just after takeoff, but it did not say how they were flipped.

Almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground, closed-circuit TV footage showed a backup energy source called a ram air turbine had deployed, indicating a loss of power from the engines. One pilot was then 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.

Without fuel flowing to the engines, the London-bound plane began to lose thrust. After reaching a height of 650 feet, the plane began to sink. The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to run, and the airplane automatically tried restarting the engines, the report said. But the plane was too low and too slow to be able to recover, aviation safety expert John Nance told Reuters.

The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college campus, the report said, killing 19 people on the ground and 241 of the 242 on board the 787.

Pilots raise concerns about blame-game
Meanwhile, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), a professional pilots' body, has expressed concerns over the preliminary investigation report on the Air India Boeing 787 plane crash, saying that assigning blame before a thorough, transparent, and data-driven investigation is both "premature and irresponsible." The FIP, in a statement on Wednesday, also urged all stakeholders, including the media, commentators, and authorities, to "refrain from disseminating partial narratives or making unfounded assumptions"."At the outset, we would like to register our dissatisfaction with the exclusion of pilot representatives from the investigation process. We also firmly object to the way in which the preliminary report has been interpreted and presented publicly," FIP President C S Randhawa said in the statement. "Assigning blame before a thorough, transparent, and data-driven investigation is both premature and irresponsible. Such speculative commentary undermines the professionalism of highly trained crew members and causes undue distress to their families and colleagues," the Federation said in the statement.

No safety recommendations
In an internal memo on Monday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the preliminary report found no mechanical or maintenance faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out. The AAIB's preliminary report had no safety recommendations for Boeing or engine manufacturer GE.

After the report was released, the US Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing 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 circumstantial evidence increasingly indicates that a crew member flipped the engine fuel switches, Nance said, given there was "no other rationale explanation" that was consistent with the information released to date.

Nonetheless, investigators "still have to dig into all the factors" and rule out other possible contributing factors which would take time, he said.

Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, and under international rules, a final report is expected within a year of an accident. The Air India crash has rekindled debate over adding flight deck cameras, known as cockpit image recorders, on airliners. Nance said investigators likely would have benefited greatly from having video footage of the cockpit during the Air India flight. Air India has faced additional scrutiny on other fronts after the crash.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said this month it plans to investigate its budget airline, Air India Express, after Reuters reported the carrier did not follow a directive to change engine parts of an Airbus A320 in a timely manner and falsified records to show compliance.
(With Reuters, PTI inputs.)