New Delhi: A cockpit recording from the ill-fated Air India flight that went down on June 12 in Ahmedabad brings to the fore the fact that the Captain shut off fuel to the plane’s engine during the final moments of the flight, a report in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said.
However, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) has slammed it, stating that the preliminary probe report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) did not put blame on any pilot.
What did the WSJ report say
The WSJ report said the First Officer flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner enquired from the Captain why he had shifted the switches to the “cutoff” position, soon after the take-off. The First Officer panicked after this, but the Captain stayed calm, the report claimed.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, reportedly had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours, of which 8,596 hours were on a Boeing 787, and First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, had a flying experience of 3,403 hours, of which he spent 1,128 hours being a co-pilot on 787 Boeing jets.
The WSJ mentioned the initial report by the AIIB, which also indicated that the fuel cutoff switches for both engines were moved to the cutoff position one after the other, within a span of just one second, at a low altitude shortly after take-off. It took only 32 seconds for the flight to go down from takeoff to the crash.
The preliminary report, released last week, had suggested that it was the Captain who turned off the switches, the WSJ pointed out. “The report didn’t say whether turning off the switches might have been accidental or deliberate,” it added.
What did the pilots’ body say
Hitting out at the WSJ report, Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) President CS Randhawa called it “baseless” and said it would take action against the publication. He added that AIIB’s preliminary report makes no mention of the pilots turning off the switches controlling fuel flow to the engines. Randhawa added that no conclusion should be drawn before the final report comes out.
Randhawa was quoted as saying by ANI: “…Nowhere in the (probe) report has it been mentioned that the fuel control switch was turned off due to the pilot’s mistake. I condemn the article. They said it was the pilot’s mistake. They have not read the report properly, and we will take action against them through FIP.”
“We had issued a press statement yesterday that no channel, commentator or president of any agency should give such an opinion that has no basis. The detailed report will take time; till then, people are giving their own opinions without any basis, which is not right,” he added.
FIP President also urged the Civil Aviation ministry for the probe committee to be reconstituted, taking pilots, engineers and air safety experts on board.
