Air India captain cut fuel seconds before crash, US experts say
Sumeet Sabharwal, the captain of the doomed Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was asked by his panicked co-pilot why he had moved the fuel-control switches to the 'cut-off' position, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
The captain was said to have remained calm during the exchange, which was captured by the cockpit's voice recorders, before the London-bound plane crashed into a hostel block in Ahmedabad about 30 seconds after take-off. All but one of the 230 passengers and all 12 crew members died. An additional 19 people were killed on the ground.
A preliminary report released last week by Indian investigators also concluded that the plane's fuel-control switches had been flipped almost simultaneously but did not identify the pilot responsible. Nor did it say whether the action was accidental or deliberate.
The report, by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), said one pilot had asked the other why he had moved the switches. The other denied having done so.
It is likely that the co-pilot, first officer Clive Kunder, 32, would have had his hands pulling back on the plane's controls at the point of take-off, said US pilots who had read the Indian authorities' report. Sabharwal, 56, would have been more likely to have had his hands free because he was the monitoring pilot.
The fuel control switches were turned off one second apart,then flicked back on ten seconds later, according to the preliminary report.
The switches, which toggle between 'run' and 'cut-off', are used for the engine start and stop in every flight. They are positioned on the console between the pilots and are impossible to manipulate accidentally because they are guarded and require deliberate actions to move.
• Who were the Air India pilots who flew the jet that crashed?
A press officer for India's Ministry of Civil Aviation and AAIB called the Journal's reporting one-sided and declined to comment further.
The Indian Commercial Pilots' Association said that the crew 'acted in line with their training and responsibilities under challenging conditions and the pilots shouldn't be vilified based on conjecture'.
'To casually suggest pilot suicide without verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting and a disservice to the dignity of the profession,' it said.
Campbell Wilson, the chief executive of Air India, told employees in an internal memo that the pilots had passed mandatory pre-flight breathalyser tests and health checks before the flight took off.
• Air India victim families bewildered by crash report
He has also confirmed there were no mechanical or maintenance faults in the jet. This was the first fatal crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. However, the preliminary report released by Indian authorities did not rule out possible design flaws, malfunctions or maintenance issues.
Sabharwal was a pilot of decades' standing with 15,638 hours of flying experience, of which 8,596 hours were on a Boeing 787. He had promised to call his family when the flight arrived in London, the Times of India reported. Kunder had 3,403 hours of flying experience.
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