Air India 171 crash: All the pieces we all know factors to an uncomfortable fact

[ad_1] With 260 casualties and just one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is likely one of the deadliest aviation incidents in current historical past — and up to now it’s proving to be some of the frustratingly opaque.

Video of the June 12 incident had beforehand captured the Boeing 787 taking off efficiently from Ahmedabad certain for London, solely to quickly descend, crash right into a medical faculty advanced, and explode into flames. The crash killed all however one of many aircraft’s 242 occupants. It additionally broken 5 buildings, killed 19 folks on the bottom, and injured over 60 extra.

The weeks that adopted noticed rampant speculation , AI-generated hoaxes , and conspiracy theories . Lastly, on July 11 India’s air security group, the Plane Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the reason for the catastrophe. The 15-page report pinpointed a darkish and disturbing issue as the rationale for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, somebody or one thing lower the movement of gas to each engines, virtually concurrently. This prompted a short however deadly twin engine shutdown that proved not possible for the aircraft to recuperate from.

The implications of that double shutdown are fairly bleak — however there’s nonetheless quite a bit we don’t know.

Within the weeks following the tragedy, public hypothesis concerning the potential trigger ranged from a hen strike to {an electrical} downside; some steered gas contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many centered on what appeared to have been an excessive prevalence steered by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) , which deploys when there are engine issues: a complete engine failure.

Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, together with some pilots. Amongst them was Trevor Smith , name signal “Hoover,” a former navy pilot who now flies for a business airline. On the facet, he runs the YouTube crash evaluation channel Pilot Debrief . Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what gave the impression to be the twin lack of thrust to each engines, and speculated that maybe one engine had misplaced thrust for an unknown cause and that then one of many pilots had by accident turned off the gas management change to the opposite engine, inflicting each to lose thrust.

Smith was hypothesizing a state of affairs through which not less than one engine had been misplaced attributable to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the opposite engine. The preliminary report, nevertheless, was extra grim. It rejected all of these potentialities and as a substitute pointed firmly towards a easy however unthinkable occasion: Each engines had been shut down, first one after which the opposite, by the use of the gas management cutoff change.

In most Boeing airplanes, the movement of gas to the engines will get activated through two gas management switches. Within the Boeing 787, the jet gas management switches sit in the primary console of the plane slightly below the throttles (that are used to manage thrust energy). The gas switches will not be simple to interact accidentally; they've a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anybody utilizing them to first pull up on the knobs, flip them barely, after which maneuver them up or down into the place you need — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a tablet bottle. Moreover, two raised metallic guards on both facet of the 2 switches defend towards unintentional bumping or jostling.

<img alt="A captioned photo of a Boeing 787 console showing the fuel control switches set to the “cutoff” position, with captions pointing out the location of the switches and the protective guards on either side." data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/GettyImages-951922648_withMarkup.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0.24875621890547%2C100%2C99.502487562189&w=2400"/> The console of a Boeing 787. Paige Vickers; Vox/Getty Pictures

There have been no historic points with the switches on this specific 787, and that part of the console had been refurbished as lately as 2023. Moreover, following the crash, different Air India Boeings had been inspected, and no fuel switch issues had been discovered with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches both.

This important context underscores each the reliability of the switches — they had been functioning usually with no issues — and the guardrails that had been in place to guard towards any related mishaps. With the metallic guards and the locking mechanisms, it might be all however not possible for an accident to knock each switches into the cutoff place, particularly on the identical time.

And but what we all know from the preliminary report is that the gas cutoff switches had been someway switched from “run” to “cutoff” — from “on” to “off,” successfully. They had been moved instantly after the airplane lifted off the bottom and reached its most takeoff velocity of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up evaluation video, Smith mapped out the timeline supplied within the report, emphasizing that the 2 switches had been turned off in fast succession, only a second aside — a brief hole that is smart, he famous, if somebody had been to maneuver their hand from one change to a different.

And not using a gas provide, the engines instantly misplaced energy. The RAT started supplying hydraulic energy to the aircraft just a few seconds after the gas was lower off. Just a few seconds after this, one or each pilots realized what had occurred. They positioned the switches again into the right place about 9 seconds after they had been moved. The engines started to restart, however by the point that they had recovered, it was already too late.

Preliminary media studies claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday name to air site visitors management had acknowledged, “Thrust not achieved,” as the reason for the decision shortly earlier than dropping contact. Nevertheless, the investigative report didn’t embody this assertion, and recordings from the cockpit haven't been made public.

What we do know is that in line with the preliminary report, “one of many pilots is heard asking the opposite why did he lower off [the fuel]. The opposite pilot responded that he didn't achieve this.”

So was the cutoff achieved deliberately?

The preliminary report has drawn criticism for its vagueness , and for the dearth of a direct transcript of the aforementioned second from the cockpit recorder. The AAIB has additionally drawn hearth for its choice to not subject any security pointers on account of the early levels of its investigation. Nevertheless, the report was clear that the investigation is ongoing, and a number of pilots associations have cautioned against speculating earlier than all of the details are recognized.

Nonetheless, by its inclusion of the cockpit trade, the preliminary report signifies that one pilot realized the switches had been manually moved and questioned the opposite pilot about it earlier than transferring the switches again into the “run” place. Given the digital impossibility of an unintentional twin cutoff, and the intense unlikelihood of a twin engine shutdown being attributable to some other subject, the pilot’s implied assumption within the second that his colleague had manually moved the switches himself appears affordable.

Following the report’s launch, the Wall Avenue Journal reported that the investigation was intensifying its focus on the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal . Because the pilot monitoring, Sabharwal would seemingly have had his palms free throughout the takeoff, whereas the primary officer, Clive Kunder, 32, would have been busy truly flying the aircraft.

Based on the Journal, the trade referenced within the preliminary report concerned Kunder querying Sabharwal about why the captain had moved the switches. Within the following moments, Kunder “expressed shock after which panicked” whereas Sabharwal “appeared to stay calm.”

After all, with out video of the second, and with out figuring out extra concerning the carefully held particulars of the investigation to this point, it’s troublesome to know what the state of affairs within the cockpit really was. It’s potential that Kunder’s panic and Sabharwal’s calm mirrored nothing greater than their respective stage of profession expertise.

As Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal lately explored, the ability imbalance in a cockpit between a senior and a youthful or much less skilled pilot can have a big impact on the end result of a aircraft mishap. But on this case, it appears seemingly that even in a balanced co-piloting dynamic, nothing might have helped an unwary pilot predict, forestall, or recuperate from the engine failure.

What do we all know concerning the pilots and the airline?

Sabharwal was a real veteran pilot, with over 15,000 profession flight hours, almost half of them piloting the 787. As a youthful pilot, Kunder had simply 3,400 hours of flight time, however over 1,100 of them had been on the 787.

It’s been broadly reported that Sabharwal was planning to retire quickly to look after his ailing father, who himself was a profession aviation ministry official. In reporting after the crash, he has been universally described by pals and colleagues as extraordinarily sort, light, reserved, and soft-spoken. Kunder got here from a household of pilots, went to flight faculty in Florida, and reportedly selected piloting over a profession in esports as a result of he cherished to fly.

Following the crash, the Telegraph quoted a supply claiming that Sabharwal had struggled with despair and had taken psychological well being go away from the corporate. Nevertheless, Air India’s mother or father firm, the Tata Group, contradicted this, with a spokesperson clarifying to the Telegraph that Sabharwal’s final medical go away was a bereavement go away in 2022, and emphasizing that “the preliminary report didn't discover something noteworthy” in his current medical historical past.

If pilots don’t get remedy, they might endanger themselves and others whereas within the air. But when they do get remedy, the airline might floor them.

Nevertheless, it may very well be very simple for psychological well being points in pilots to go undetected and unreported. That’s as a result of the strict scrutiny and restrictions positioned upon business pilots within the wake of the 2015 Germanwings tragedy — through which a pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the aircraft, killing everybody on board — creates a harmful catch-22 for pilots : In the event that they don’t get thorough and common psychological well being remedy, they may very well be endangering themselves and others after they’re within the air. But when they do get psychological well being remedy, the airline could ground them , maybe completely. For pilots who love flying, it’s a significant danger evaluation: Around 1,100 people have been killed due to aircraft crashes deliberately attributable to pilots since 1982.

The tragedy comes at a pivotal second for each Air India and Boeing, which have every been trying to rebound from criticism.

Air India is likely one of the oldest and previously some of the influential airlines on the earth, recognized for the opulence and exceptional artistic style it cultivated all through the twentieth century. After the corporate was nationalized within the Fifties, nevertheless, its once-sterling fame considerably backslid, till it was lastly re-privatized in 2022 and handed off to the Tata Group. The corporate’s makes an attempt to revitalize the airline have included investing billions in readying the corporate for an expanded fleet and a reentry into the worldwide market — an enlargement that could be jeopardized due to the high-profile nature of the June crash. India’s civil aviation minister lately announced that the corporate has moreover acquired 9 security notices within the final six months.

In the meantime Boeing continues to face criticism within the face of ongoing security and upkeep concerns , and lately agreed to pay over $1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution over two aircraft crashes linked to defective flight management techniques that resulted within the deaths of 346 folks. Whereas there’s no indication but that something concerning the Air India crash was attributable to a defect within the aircraft, the optics received’t assist the beleaguered airline.

Maybe as a result of the stakes are so excessive, a number of pilot organizations in India in addition to a bevy of media commentators have resisted the preliminary report’s implication that one of many pilots prompted the crash. The Airline Pilots Affiliation of India in addition to the Indian Business Pilots Affiliation each released statements criticizing the preliminary report and objecting to any presumption of guilt. Others have suggested an undetected subject with the aircraft may be at fault, or that the AAIB, which issued the preliminary report, might need one thing to cover.

The complete investigation into the crash is prone to take not less than a 12 months to finish, however given the vagaries of the knowledge obtained from the cockpit, it’s unsure whether or not we'll ever know greater than we presently do. Official aviation organizations have cautioned towards a rush to judgment till the investigation is accomplished.