The preliminary report flowing from the investigation into the crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 at Ahmedabad, on June 12, 2025, has a focal point now.

Released in the early hours of July 12, 2025, a month after the accident, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s 15-page document has highlighted the fuel control switches of 

“Engine 1 and Engine 2” having “transitioned from the ‘Run’ to the ‘Cutoff’ position, one after another, with a time gap of one second”. 

That this happened just after flight AI171 had begun to lift off from the 3,505-metre-long runway, leading to the engines beginning to decrease from their take-off values as fuel starvation hit, has accentuated another detail. 

How did two separate switches that are guarded by brackets, feature a metal stop locking mechanism and have separate systems for redundancy move to ‘cutoff’? And why? 

The element of bafflement by one crew member, and denial by the other pilot, over the cutoff, has compounded the issue, more so in the absence of the full and raw transcript of the cockpit voice recording. However, in the midst of the crisis, 

what must be acknowledged was a display of airmanship, with a partially successful relighting of the GEnx-1B70/75/P2 engines, which ended with the call of May Day.

Source: Thehindu