(Adnkronos) – The black box recording confirms: it was the captain of the Air India flight who turned off the switches that controlled the fuel flow to the two engines of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crashed shortly after takeoff in western India, causing the death of 260 people last June 12. Sources familiar with the initial assessment of the investigations by US officials exclusively report this to the Wall Street Journal. The sources also explained that the recordings show the co-pilot expressing first surprise and then panic at the decision to turn off the engines, while the captain remained calm.
In the recording, the first officer, Clive Kunder, can be heard asking the more experienced commander, Sumeet Sabharwal, why he had moved the switches to the “cutoff” position, according to the sources. The first officer expressed surprise and then panicked, the sources continue, according to which the commander remained calm. A preliminary report of the investigation, released last week, summarized the exchange, but did not specify which pilot said what. The report, prepared by the Indian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, stated that one pilot had asked the other why he had moved the switches, while the other had denied doing so.
The details of the preliminary report also suggest that it was the captain who deactivated the switches, according to sources familiar with the matter, US pilots and safety experts. The report does not specify whether the switches were turned off accidentally or intentionally. The report did not rule out possible design flaws, malfunctions or maintenance problems, and highlighted the involvement of aerospace medicine and psychology experts in the investigation.
When the plane crashed, Kunder was piloting and therefore probably had his hands busy pulling back the Dreamliner’s controls at that stage of the flight, according to US pilots who have read the report by the Indian authorities. Sabharwal, as the monitoring pilot, would more likely have had his hands free while supervising the operation. According to the report, the switches were operated in succession, one second apart. About 10 seconds later, both switches were reactivated. The plane crashed near Ahmedabad airport, killing all but one of the 242 people on board.
