The co-pilot of Air India Flight 171 asked his captain why he switched off the Boeing’s fuel switches, seconds before the plane went down, killing 260 people, according to Bloomberg.
A preliminary report last week revealed that both fuel control switches were simultaneously turned off, which immediately cut off fuel supply to the engines while the plane was in the air, just seconds after taking off from India’s Ahmedabad Airport on June 12.
A voice recording of the cockpit was recovered and captured one of the two pilots asking the other why he “did the cutoff,” while the other pilot replies that he didn’t.
It has now been revealed that it was the junior pilot, first officer Clive Kunder, 32, who asked the chilling question to his superior, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, Bloomberg reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Speculation following the release of the preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau had suggested this might have been the case, as Kunder would have had his hands full flying the plane.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the younger pilot “panicked” while Sabharwal remained calm, citing people familiar with U.S. officials’ assessment of the incident.
Moving the spring-loaded fuel toggle requires the pilots to pass over small metal guards, pull the mushroom-shaped lever upwards, before yanking it into an on or off position and setting it.
The AAIB probe revealed that the “cut off” was corrected 10 seconds after being done. However, it was too late to avoid the disaster that followed.
Officials are now following two lines of enquiry as to how the toggle reached the “cut off” position: human error, or a system error with the Boeing jet.
It comes after India’s civil aviation authority ordered an inspection of Boeing 737s and 787s in the country to ascertain whether the fuel switches were faulty.
Michael Daniel, a retired Federal Aviation Administration inspector and accident investigator, told Bloomberg that microphones in the flight deck could ultimately reveal the truth.
“There are multiple microphones around the cockpit, including their headsets,” said Daniel.
Investigators might be able to discern the sound of the switches, which sit between the pilots, and determine the direction from which it came.
Only one of the 242 people aboard the plane—Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British national—survived the crash by escaping through an opening in the fuselage.
