The crash of the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner on June 12 was caused by a loss of fuel supply to the engines, according to a preliminary report by the Air Accident Investigation Bureau of India (AAIB), CNN reports.
Investigators were able to obtain data from the plane's black boxes, including 49 hours of flight data and two hours of cockpit audio, including before the crash. According to the report, the plane had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when the fuel cutoff switches for both engines moved from the Run position to the Cutoff position one after the other, within one second of each other.
In the cockpit recording, one of the pilots can be heard asking the other why he turned off the throttle. The other responds that he did not, the report says.
Shortly thereafter, the switches were returned to the position they were supposed to be in and the engines were in the process of restarting when the accident occurred.
According to CNN safety analyst David Soucy, it is impossible for the plane to accidentally shut off fuel — the fuel selectors are designed in such a way that it is extremely rare for them to be accidentally turned off. Over the years, these switches have been refined to ensure that they cannot be accidentally moved and do not automatically trip. They do not move on their own, Soucy said.
The AAIB is looking into sabotage as a possible explanation for the Air India crash. No similar crash has ever seen both engines suddenly stop seconds after takeoff, India's Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said earlier. According to CNN, the pilot-in-command was a 56-year-old man with more than 15,000 hours of flying experience. The co-pilot was a 32-year-old man with more than 3,400 hours of flying experience.
The Boeing, flying to London, crashed shortly after takeoff in a residential area onto a dormitory building. There were 242 people on board. Of these, only one survived, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British citizen of Indian origin. In total, 274 people died in the crash, including victims on the ground. The crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was the first such aircraft crash in history.
