A pilots' body has expressed concern over the preliminary findings on the Air India crash assigning blame to the pilots, coinciding with a fresh US report that cited cockpit recordings to claim that the captain cut the fuel flow to the engines.
The Wall Street Journal, citing assessment by US officials, said the black box recording indicated that the captain turned off the fuel control switches.
The flight, AI 171, was being commanded by 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal, who had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours, and First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, who had 3,403 hours of total experience.
Seconds after takeoff, the first officer asked the captain why he moved the switches from "run" to the "cutoff" position, the report said. After noticing it, the first officer panicked, while the captain seemed to remain calm, the WSJ report said.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was on its way to London, crashed into the BJ Medical College hostel building in Ahmedabad within seconds of take-off. The tragedy left 260 people, including 241 passengers and crew on board and 19 others on the ground, dead.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) raised concerns about how the preliminary report was interpreted and presented publicly.
"At the outset, we would like to register our dissatisfaction with the exclusion of pilot representatives from the investigation process... Assigning blame before a thorough, transparent, and data-driven investigation is both premature and irresponsible," the statement said.
The initial probe report, released by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), revealed that the fuel control switches of the Boeing 787 flipped from a "run" to a "cutoff" position within a second of each other after lift-off.
The fuel control switches regulate fuel flow into a plane's engines. The AAIB report, however, does not mention if the switches were moved by either of the pilots to the "cutoff" position.
The report does mention one pilot asking the other why he cut off the fuel supply, with the other responding he did not. However, the full transcript of the conversation was never released, prompting several theories on social media.
Experts have said that accidental movement of the switches is not quite possible. On Wednesday, Air India said inspections of the locking mechanism of fuel control switches across its fleet of Boeing 787 aircraft found no issues.
Meanwhile, an Indian Express report said investigators are probing if glitches in the electrical and software components of the doomed aircraft led to the transition of the fuel control switches to the "cut-off mode" without the command of the pilots.
The government has said the report was a preliminary assessment and urged the public and the media to refrain from jumping to conclusions until the final findings are released, which may take a year.
