Air India crash report shows pilot confusion over engine switch movement
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London from the Indian city of Ahmedabad began to lose thrust and sink shortly after takeoff, according to the report on the world's deadliest aviation accident in a decade released on Saturday by Indian accident investigators.
The report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) about the June 12 crash raises fresh questions over the position of the critical engine fuel cutoff switches.
Wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane sits on the open ground, outside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. Reuters
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.
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 did not identify which remarks were made by the flight's captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday" just before the crash.
Friends and family members mourn near the coffin of Co-Pilot Clive Kunder, who died after an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane crashed. Reuters
The commanding pilot of the Air India plane was Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, who had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours and, according to the Indian government, was also an Air India instructor. His co-pilot was Clive Kunder, 32, who had 3,403 hours of total experience.
The fuel switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff just after takeoff. The preliminary report did not say how the switches could have flipped to the cutoff position during the flight.
"We care for the welfare and the well-being of pilots so let's not jump to any conclusions at this stage, let us wait for the final report," Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu told local news channels.
Policemen ride past buildings damaged in the June 12 Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad on Saturday. AP
The crash is a challenge for Tata Group's ambitious campaign to restore Air India's reputation and revamp its fleet, after taking the carrier over from the government in 2022.
Air India acknowledged the report in a statement. The carrier said it was cooperating with Indian authorities but declined further comment.
FUEL SWITCHES
Experts have said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches.
"If they were moved because of a pilot, why?" asked U.S. aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse.
The switches flipped a second apart, the report said, roughly the time it would take to shift one and then the other, according to US aviation expert John Nance. He added that a pilot would normally never turn the switches off in flight, especially as the plane is starting to climb.
People offer prayers for crew members of the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad last month, in Mumbai on Saturday. AP
Flipping to cutoff almost immediately cuts the engines. It is most often used to turn engines off once a plane has arrived at its airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as an engine fire. The report does not indicate there was any emergency requiring an engine cutoff.
At the crash site, both fuel switches were found in the run position and there had been indications of both engines relighting before the low-altitude crash, said the report, which was released around 1:30 a.m. IST on Saturday (2000 GMT on Friday).
This screengrab from UGC video footage shows thick black smoke billowing from a residential area after Air India flight AI171 crashed in Ahmedabad. File / AFP
Asked about the report, the father of first officer Kunder told reporters "I am not from the airline", declining to comment further during a prayer meeting held in the memory of the airline's crew on Saturday in Mumbai, where emotional scenes played out among grieving relatives.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board thanked Indian officials for their cooperation in a statement and noted that there were no recommended actions in the report aimed at operators of Boeing 787 jets or the GE engines.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said its priority was to follow the facts where they lead and it was committed to promptly addressing any risks identified throughout the process.
Boeing said it continued to support the investigation and its customer, Air India. GE Aerospace did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
CRASH PROBE
The AAIB, an office under India's civil aviation ministry, is leading the probe into the crash, which killed all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.
Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, with a preliminary report due 30 days after the accident, according to international rules, and a final report expected within a year.
The plane's black boxes, combined cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders, were recovered in the days following the crash and later downloaded in India.
The report said "all applicable airworthiness directives and alert service bulletins were complied (with) on the aircraft as well as engines."
The airport closed-circuit TV recording from Ahmedabad had earlier shown the Air India plane rose to a height of 650 feet after it took off, but then suddenly lost altitude, crashing in a fireball into a nearby building.
The investigation report said as the Dreamliner lost altitude, it initially made contact with several trees and an incineration chimney, before hitting the building.
Air India has faced additional scrutiny on other fronts after the crash.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said last week 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.
India is banking on a boom in aviation to support wider development goals, with New Delhi saying it wants India to be a job-creating global aviation hub along the lines of Dubai.
Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ARN News Center
2 days ago
- ARN News Center
Incorrect speed record card caused 2024 Nepal plane crash, says panel
A passenger plane crash in Nepal last year that killed 18 people was caused by faulty information about the aircraft's takeoff speed in the flight documentation, a report issued on Friday by a government-appointed investigation panel said. A CRJ-200LR aircraft, owned by Nepal's Saurya Airlines, crashed shortly after taking off from the capital Kathmandu in July last year, killing all 17 passengers and the co-pilot. Only the captain survived. The crash was caused by a "deep stall during take-off because of abnormally rapid pitch rate commanded at a lower-than-optimal rotation speed", the report submitted to the government said. Aviation expert Nagendra Prasad Ghimire told Reuters the aircraft made a premature takeoff before gaining the necessary speed. The report said errors in a speed card - a document that provides important airspeed information for a specific aircraft, particularly during takeoff, climb and landing - had gone unnoticed and the airline had failed to address previous cases of a high pitch rate - the rate at which an aircraft's nose rotates up or down - during take-off. It said there had been gross negligence and non-compliance by the operator during the entire process of cargo and baggage handling. It recommended all operators review their speed cards and comply with the requirements of cargo and baggage handling. The panel also asked the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to review the procedure for permitting non-scheduled flights. CAAN spokesman Babu Ram Paudel declined comment, saying he had not seen the report. Saurya Airlines will do "everything necessary" to implement the recommendations, operation manager Bivechan Khanal said. The crash focused attention on the poor air safety record of landlocked Nepal, which is heavily dependent on air connectivity.
Dubai Eye
2 days ago
- Dubai Eye
Incorrect speed record card caused 2024 Nepal plane crash, says panel
A passenger plane crash in Nepal last year that killed 18 people was caused by faulty information about the aircraft's takeoff speed in the flight documentation, a report issued on Friday by a government-appointed investigation panel said. A CRJ-200LR aircraft, owned by Nepal's Saurya Airlines, crashed shortly after taking off from the capital Kathmandu in July last year, killing all 17 passengers and the co-pilot. Only the captain survived. The crash was caused by a "deep stall during take-off because of abnormally rapid pitch rate commanded at a lower-than-optimal rotation speed", the report submitted to the government said. Aviation expert Nagendra Prasad Ghimire told Reuters the aircraft made a premature takeoff before gaining the necessary speed. The report said errors in a speed card - a document that provides important airspeed information for a specific aircraft, particularly during takeoff, climb and landing - had gone unnoticed and the airline had failed to address previous cases of a high pitch rate - the rate at which an aircraft's nose rotates up or down - during take-off. It said there had been gross negligence and non-compliance by the operator during the entire process of cargo and baggage handling. It recommended all operators review their speed cards and comply with the requirements of cargo and baggage handling. The panel also asked the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to review the procedure for permitting non-scheduled flights. CAAN spokesman Babu Ram Paudel declined comment, saying he had not seen the report. Saurya Airlines will do "everything necessary" to implement the recommendations, operation manager Bivechan Khanal said. The crash focused attention on the poor air safety record of landlocked Nepal, which is heavily dependent on air connectivity. In 2013, the European Union, citing safety concerns, banned air carriers certified in Nepal from flying the European sky.
The National
2 days ago
- The National
Air India crash probe: What we know so far about the fatal Boeing 787 accident
A preliminary report on the investigation into the Air India flight that crashed last month has answered some questions about the fatal accident but raised many more and fuelled speculation about the cause. India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau released the report on July 12, shedding some light on the tragic crash of Air India Flight AI 171. But it has also led to debate about the role of the pilots, the flow of fuel to the plane's engines and the merits of installing cockpit cameras to help aviation safety authorities in their investigations. So what do we know so far about the accident and the shockwaves it has sent through the aviation industry? What happened? The Air India aircraft – a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport, in Gujarat, north-west India, on June 12. The London Gatwick-bound flight, which was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members, crashed into buildings of a medical college near the airport. The accident killed 260 people − all the crew, all but one of the passengers and 19 people on the ground. The aircraft, registration VT-ANB, was fitted with GE engines. What is the cause of the crash? The 15-page preliminary report released by the AAIB suggested that the aircraft's fuel control switches were turned off, cutting fuel to the engines and causing a loss of engine thrust shortly after take-off. Fuel control switches regulate fuel flow into an aircraft's engines, used by pilots to start or shut down engines on the ground or to manually shut down or restart engines, if an engine failure occurs during a flight. 'In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,' the report said. It did not identify which of the remarks were made by the flight's captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted, 'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday' just before the crash. The switches had been flipped back to the run position, the report said, but the plane could not gain power quickly enough to avoid crashing. The report findings left a key question unanswered: Why and by which pilot were two fuel switches moved to a cut-off position, starving the two engines of thrust just as the plane needed the most lift. The report is based on data from the aircraft's black boxes, which combines digital flight data and cockpit voice information. Can theories by substantiated? In a statement on July 17, the AAIB said that it is 'too early to reach any definitive conclusions' about the cause of the crash. 'The investigation by the AAIB is still not complete. The final investigation report will come out with root causes and recommendations,' it said. The body urged the public and the media to refrain from 'spreading premature narratives' that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process. It added that 'certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting.' This came after media reports abounded about the role of one of the pilots in cutting the flow of fuel to the plane's engines, but these have not been substantiated by official findings. When will the final report come out? The AAIB said on July 17 that it will publish updates 'as and when required'. 'AAIB appeals to all concerned to await publication of Final Investigation Report after completion of the investigation. AAIB will also publish updates, as and when required, which have technical and public interest,' the body said in a statement, without providing a date for the final report. What have Boeing said so far? The Air India crash marks the first hull loss for Boeing's 787 widebody aircraft. Boeing has said it continues to support the investigation. The accident will be a 'stress test' for Boeing, which had made progress in rebuilding trust after a series of safety and production quality lapses, analysts have said. 'At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to 787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers,' according to the AAIB report. Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, said earlier this week that there is a 'strong argument' to install cockpit cameras that would help aviation safety authorities investigating accidents such as the Air India crash, Bloomberg reported. What has Air India done in response to the accident? India's civil aviation regulator ordered the country's airlines this week to investigate the locking feature on the fuel switches of several Boeing models. Air India's inspection of the locking feature on the fuel control switches of its existing Boeing 787 aircraft found no issues, AFP reported, citing an internal airline memo. What are other Boeing 737 and 787 operators doing? Flydubai has joined several other airlines in the Middle East in checking the cockpit fuel switches on their Boeing aircraft, following the Air India crash investigation report. Flydubai conducted 'precautionary inspections' of the fuel switches on its Boeing 737. Elsewhere in the region, Saudia said it had completed precautionary inspections on the fuel shut-off switch system across its 787 fleet and that 'all aircraft remain fully operational.' Oman Air said it has finished checks on its 787s and is completing inspections of its 737s. When will Air India resume normal flight schedules? Air India on July 15 said it had performed additional precautionary checks on its Boeing 787 aircraft and would partially restore its international flight schedule, which it had scaled back after the crash. It will resume some flight frequencies from August 1, with full restoration planned from October 1. With the partial restoration, Air India will operate more than 525 international flights per week on 63 short, long and ultra long-haul routes.
