A cut in the fuel supply to the engines caused last month’s Air India crash that killed 260 people, a preliminary report has found.
The London-bound plane had barely left the runway at Ahmedabad airport when it hurtled back to earth. Everyone on board was killed, except for one passenger.
According to the report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, obtained by CNN, the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, starving the engines of fuel.
Investigators were able to get data out of the plane’s “black box” recorders, including 49 hours of flight data and two hours of cockpit audio, including from the crash.
The aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel cutoff switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec,” according to the report.
“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report reads.
Shortly after, the switches were reversed back to where they should have been, and the engines were in the process of powering back up when the crash happened.
On the 787, the fuel cutoff switches are between the two pilots’ seats, immediately behind the plane’s throttle levers. They are protected on the sides by a metal bar and have a locking mechanism designed to prevent accidental cutoff.
The fuel cutoff switches are seen below the throttle on a Boeing 787 in 2010.
Airport footage shows the Ram Air Turbine, an emergency power source on an aircraft, deployed during the plane’s initial climb after takeoff, the report said. The plane started to lose altitude before crossing the airport perimeter wall.
“When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engines full authority dual engine control automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction,” the report states.
Seconds after the engines attempted to relight, one pilot called out, “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.” The controller called out for the plane’s callsign, but didn’t get a response and watched the plane crash in the distance.
The fuel switches were “designed to be intentionally moved,” according to CNN safety analyst David Soucie, who said cases in which all fuel switches were turned off accidentally are “extremely rare.”
From youtube comment -->
There seem to be quite a many critical findings which were not properly, or entirely not discussed in this video.
1. In the report it is mentioned that in December 2018, the FAA (the U.S. aviation safety authority) issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) — this is basically a notice to inform airlines about a possible issue, but not a serious one that needs mandatory fixing. The issue was with the fuel control switches on Boeing 737 airplanes. These switches have a locking feature that keeps them safely in place, but some airlines reported that the switches were installed without this lock working properly. Even though this could be a concern, the FAA did not consider it dangerous enough to require a formal safety fix (called an Airworthiness Directive, or AD). It is also mentioned that this 787 Boeing aircraft involved in the incident uses a similar type of fuel switch (part number 4TL837-3D), so this notice might apply to those (B787) models too.
2.The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about
08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.
3.. The co-pilot was Pilot Flying (PF), and the PIC was Pilot Monitoring (PM) for the flight.
4.In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.
5. Exactly 10 seconds after as per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC.
6. MANY seem to forget that this is a PRELIMINARY REPORT and that the Investigation is continuing and the investigation team will review and examine additional evidence, records and information.
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Post added on Jul 12, 2025 at 8:53 AM