A report on the probe over the Air India Flight 171 crash indicates that it was the Senior Captain in the flight who turned off the fuel switches that led to the crash. This has been revealed by the Wall Street Journal.
According to the report by the Wall Street Journal, the captain turned off switches that controlled fuel flowing to the plane’s two engines either accidentally or deliberately.
The Wall Street Journal cited US officials who apparently believe that the captain of the flight cut off the fuel supply to both engines on purpose.
This has increased speculation on whether the accident may have been the result of deliberate sabotage or whether it was accidental, given that they are typically moved to that position only after landing.
To move the two switches to the cut off position, one would require to pull them up first then push them backwards, one at a time.
According to voice recording that has been retrieved from the cockpit, one pilot is heard asking the other why he ‘did the cut-off’. This pilot has now been identified as the first officer who was flying at the time as the senior captain observed. The Wall Street Journal further notes that while the first officer panicked over the fuel cut off, the captain remained calm.
The captain has been identified as Sumeet Sabharwal who was aged 56. He was a highly experienced captain with over 15,600 flight hours, out of which 8,500 flight hours were on the Boeing 787.
According to the initial investigative reports on the crash that killed 260 people, both of the fuel control switches in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner moved 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 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.
