ARCHIVE – Officials inspect the crash site of the Air India plane in Ahmedabad, India, on Friday, June 13, 2025. After the plane crash that killed more than 240 people, the authorities have found the plane’s flight data recorder, which is important for the investigation into the cause of the accident. Photo: Ajit Solanki/AP/dpa
Keystone
According to an expert, the fuel regulators, which may have played a major role in the crash of the Air India plane with 260 fatalities, cannot simply be switched off. The regulators are “really important switches” that are protected from being touched accidentally, aviation expert Graham Braithwaite from Cranfield University told the BBC.
The crash of the passenger plane a month ago may have been caused by an interrupted fuel supply. This is according to a preliminary report by the Indian Air Accident Investigation Board. According to the report, the regulators for the fuel supply of the two engines jumped to the “switched off” position almost simultaneously immediately after take-off.
Clues from the aircraft’s voice recorders
Why the switch positions could have changed is not answered in the preliminary report. According to the report, one of the pilots could be heard in the cockpit on the recovered voice recorder of the aircraft asking the other why he had flipped the fuel switch. “The other pilot replied that he had not done so.”
To operate such a switch, pilots would have to “lift it and move it very firmly to the desired position”, the expert explained. The report does not claim that a pilot moved the switch, Braithwaite said. The airline Air India did not want to comment on the initial findings for the time being.
German aviation expert: Everything points to suicide
Aviation expert Heinrich Grossbongardt expressed his conviction in “Der Spiegel” with regard to the preliminary report that one of the two pilots had deliberately interrupted the fuel supply. “Everything indicates that it was a suicide. That one of the two pilots of this aircraft deliberately interrupted the fuel supply – and at the very moment when the aircraft was at its most vulnerable, immediately after take-off.”
According to the report, the two fuel regulators for the engines were switched from “run” to “cutoff” a few seconds after take-off – one after the other, one second apart between switch 1 and switch 2. “According to human judgment, only one of the two men in the cockpit could have done this,” says Grossbongardt. “You can’t move these controls by mistake.”
The fuel supply was restored a few seconds later, according to the expert – but that was already too late. “Either of them could have operated them. It is not even impossible that the person who switched them off asked the other person immediately afterwards why he had switched off the fuel supply: In an attempt to cover his tracks,” said the aviation expert. There will be extensive investigations – and probably a lot of speculation about which of the two did it.