The report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) into Air India flight 171 crash has uncovered a major detail.
The probe which also joined by experts from Boeing and participants from the United States and United Kingdom shows just three seconds after take-off, the plane’s fuel control switches were flipped off.
The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, Saturday morning indicated that both pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting, which caused a loss of engine thrust (the force that moves a plane through the air) shortly after takeoff.
According to the report, a full two hours of audio was recovered from the plane’s black boxes, including from “the even Steve Cornell is a 737 captain and safety and technical director at the Australian International Pilots Association.
The report shows, at 13:38 [08:08 GMT] on the afternoon of June 12, the Dreamliner departed Ahmedabad for London Gatwick with 230 passengers, 10 cabin crew and 2 pilots on board.
Less than 40 seconds later, the aircraft lost both engines during its initial climb.
In the first such incident for a 787 Dreamliner, the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College hostel and adjoining structures in a densely populated suburb of the city, just under a nautical mile (equivalent to about 1.85km) from the runway.
The report does not conclude any reason for the switches moving or apportion blame for the crash of Air India’s Flight 171.
The Air India flight, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed on June 12 and killed at least 260 people, including 19 on the ground, in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Only one passenger survived the crash.
