Early investigation into accident in Ahmedabad in June also contains details of pilots discussing the switches
Fuel to both engines of the Air India plane that crashed and killed 260 people last month appears to have been cut off seconds after the flight took off, a preliminary report has found.
Air India flight AI171, bound for London, crashed into a densely populated residential area in the Indian city of Ahmedabad on 12 June, killing all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground. It was India’s deadliest air crash in almost three decades.
According to a preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, moments after take-off both the switches in the cockpit that controlled fuel going to the engines had been moved to the “cut-off” position. Moving the fuel switches almost immediately cuts the engine.
What killed them was a deliberate action by one of the pilots. The motive we may never know, but it doesn’t look good either way.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gy78gpnqo
The probability of both failing would be the probability of one failing squared. I find this scenario to be far less plausible than someone toggling them, regardless of motive.
It’s Boeing though…
The far more plausible scenario is someone toggled them both, especially since there was a 1s delay. That’s not something jostling the plane or falling and hitting the switches.
That bulletin says they were potentially installed without the locking feature but to my knowledge these weren’t new switches on the AI flight, nor were there any issues reported on earlier flights.