The fuel control switches in the fateful Air India Flight 171 flipped to the ‘cut-off’ position just before the crash occurred. According to the initial investigative reports on the crash that killed 260 people, both of the fuel control switches in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner suddenly moved to the ‘cut-off’ position within a second of each other.
This then starved the engines of fuel and resulted in a total power loss. The 787 Dreamliner was just 12 years old at the time of the crash. This was the first time that a Dreamliner was getting involved in an accident.
The change in the position of the switches has left investigators confounded, given that they are typically moved to that position only after landing.
According to voice recording that has been retrieved from the cockpit, one pilot is heard asking the other why he ‘did the cut-off’. The other replies that he did not. However, the recording does not clarify who between the two pilots in the cockpit posed the question and who replied. At the time of take-off, the co-pilot was flying the Dreamliner while the captain was monitoring.
The investigators have also found that the switches were returned to their normal inflight position. This triggered automatic engine relight. By the time the crash occurred, one engine was regaining thrust while the other had relit but had not yet recovered power.
In what has deepened the puzzle, it has emerged that the switches are designed and locked in such a way that accidental activations are nearly impossible. The switches must be pulled up first before they are flipped, which means that it would be near impossible to flip both at the same time in one single accidental move of the hand.
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The Air India Flight 171 heading to London crashed on June 12, 2025 shortly after takeoff. The passenger jet, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with registration VT-ANB, had taken off from Ahmedabad at 13:38 local time en route to London Gatwick. Its signal was lost seconds after take-off when the plane had reached 625 feet.
The plane’s history showed that it had been regularly flying between India and destinations including Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Melbourne.
