Nightmare Liftoff: Unanswered Questions Haunt Air India Crash as Fuel Cut Points to Cockpit Chaos

The Air India jetliner that plummeted to earth on June 12, claiming the lives of 241 of the 242 people on board, was in a death spiral almost from the moment its wheels left the Ahmedabad runway. A newly released preliminary report paints a harrowing picture of the flight's final, frantic 32 seconds, revealing that both engines lost fuel supply immediately after takeoff, leaving the pilots in a desperate, ultimately futile, struggle for control.

Filed on July 11, the 15-page document offers the first detailed chronology of the doomed Boeing 787's ascent and its swift, fiery descent into an urban district just beyond the airport perimeter. While investigators meticulously laid out the sequence of events with precise timestamps, a chilling void remains at the heart of their findings: Why, and by whom, were two critical fuel switches in the cockpit moved to the "cut-off" position just as the plane nosed into the sky, starving its powerful engines of the thrust it so desperately needed?

At the controls of the ill-fated flight was First Officer Clive Kunder, identified as the pilot flying, with approximately 1,100 flight hours on the advanced Boeing jet. Supervising him was Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the more experienced pilot monitoring. The common practice of pilots switching flying duties, particularly on longer journeys, means Kunder would have been at the yoke, commanding the widebody, while Sabharwal handled communications and assisted.

Initially, all appeared normal. The Boeing 787 lifted off into a clear sky, embarking on its journey from the western Indian city to London’s Gatwick Airport. There was no significant bird activity reported, effectively ruling out a collision as a cause for engine damage.

Then, according to the precise chronology detailed by Indian authorities, the unthinkable happened. The two fuel switches in the plane's center console were flipped, barely a second apart. The maneuver’s prompt remains a mystery, but its devastating impact was immediate. The aircraft, now crippled during a critical phase of flight, triggered its emergency power system, deploying the ram air turbine – a small fan that dropped beneath the plane's belly – all while the 787 was still visible to airport cameras.

Within the cockpit, a brief, haunting exchange was captured on the voice recorder – the only recorded conversation mentioned in the report, save for a final "mayday" call just seconds before impact. "In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff," investigators wrote. "The other pilot responded that he did not do so." The report, however, refrains from identifying which pilot uttered which words.

It took a agonizing 10 seconds for the first switch to be returned to its "run" position, restoring fuel flow to an engine, and 14 seconds for the second. For pilots just a few hundred feet above ground, battling a life-threatening emergency, this delay was an eternity. "It’s just strange," remarked Bjorn Fehrm, an aerospace engineer and former fighter pilot, now a technical analyst with Leeham News. "I would never, ever wait 10 seconds to put them on again. I would put them on in a jiffy."

While both engines were eventually relit, only the first began to regain power before the Boeing 787 plunged to the ground, grazing trees before crashing into a hostel packed with students. The impact tragically claimed 19 lives on the ground, in addition to almost all those on board.

The sequence of events was pieced together from various data points, including the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders recovered from the wreckage. However, the report remains conspicuously silent on any additional cockpit exchanges or noises that the sensitive microphones might have captured. "The most important information is the voice dialog between the pilots, and we only get one line, which is totally inadequate," Fehrm emphasized.

This glaring omission leaves a multitude of critical questions unanswered: How did the two pilots interact as the aircraft sagged back to the ground? Who was truly in control during those frantic final moments? And most perplexing, why would one of the men undertake the highly unusual and perilous maneuver of manipulating both fuel toggles? These switches are secured with a mechanism requiring a specific movement to shift them, and are typically only idled on the ground or during extreme emergencies like an engine fire.

The flight's trajectory, combined with the immediate fuel starvation after takeoff, rendered recovery almost impossible, offering the pilots virtually no room for error.

Intriguingly, the preliminary report also hints at another avenue of investigation. It flags a 2018 airworthiness bulletin from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concerning certain fuel control switches on Boeing planes, including the smaller 737 and the 787, that were installed without their locking mechanism engaged. While the Air India jet had not been inspected for this particular fault as it wasn't mandatory, and no switch defects had been reported since the throttle control module was replaced in 2023, the potential implication lingers.

Investigators have, so far, found no evidence that would necessitate immediate action concerning the Boeing aircraft or its GE Aerospace engines. "At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers," the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) report stated.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has deferred all questions to Indian authorities, while Air India, Boeing, and GE Aerospace have reiterated their commitment to cooperating with the ongoing investigation.

As is standard practice, the probe is also delving into the backgrounds and experience of the pilots. Captain Sabharwal had approximately 8,500 flight hours. Both pilots were based in Mumbai and had arrived in Ahmedabad the previous day, with "adequate rest period" prior to the flight, the report noted.

"We now know — with some degree of confidence — that both engines rolled back because these fuel switches were activated," said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the US Federal Aviation Administration. "We just don’t know why or how these switches were activated and that’s going to be a big part of this investigation."

A final report, which will ultimately seek to determine the precise cause of this tragic incident, is still months away, leaving the aviation world to ponder the unsettling questions hanging over the Ahmedabad runway.