Air India plane crash report: The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) report made shocking revelations about the AI171 crash. The preliminary report revealed that the plane’s engine fuel cutoff switches were flipped from run to cutoff. Aviation expert Mellissa Chen, in a post on X, contradicted that the design of the switches does not allow them to move inadvertently. She speculated a cockpit confusion or “one of them (the pilots) committed suicide and took everyone with him.”

“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report revealed. Chen contradicted and clarified that the knob on the engine fuel control switch “has to be pulled away from the panel before the switch can be moved.”

In a comment, Chen clarifies that a similar design is available on both a Boeing Dreamliner and Airbus. “Those are guarded switches meaning you’d have to physically pull them out then move them. It’s the same on Airbus. There is no way a crew member can “mistakenly” flick these switches to the off position…or am I wrong?” she wrote.

The fuel switch probe, however, has not been exclusive to Chen. US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse had also previously questioned whether the movement of the fuel switches was inconsistent with normal operations. “Did they move on their own, or did they move because of the pilots?” he asked. “And if they were moved because of a pilot, why?”

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Another aviation safety expert from the United States, John Cox, said the fuel switches that feed the engines couldn’t be moved by the pilots accidentally. “You can’t bump them and they move,” he said.

Air India crash report

In an attempt to regain thrust, pilots often follow a sequence of reignition. However, after the engines were shut down mid‑air, Engine 1 began to recover and started speeding up again. Engine 2 also briefly restarted, but couldn’t keep its core parts spinning fast enough to stay running, even though it kept trying to add more fuel to speed back up. The flight recorder then stopped capturing data at 1309 hours. It was at this moment that one of the pilots transmitted the Mayday signal to the ATCO.

Three seconds after taking off, the aircraft’s engine’s fuel cutoff switches almost simultaneously transitioned from run to cutoff. This means that the fuel did not reach the engine. This caused the aircraft to lose thrust and sink down, Reuters reported, citing the AAIB report.

A month after the June 12 Air India crash, the AAIB report speculated an accidental fuel switch cutoff or a system failure. One of the most fatal civil aviation tragedies, the AI171 crash took at least 240 lives and damaged five buildings in its crash radius, including a college hostel.