Members of the Indian Military’s engineering staff put together to take away the wreckage of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane, certain for London’s Gatwick Airport, which crashed throughout take-off from an airport in Ahmedabad, India June 14, 2025.
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Basit Zargar/AFP by way of Getty
A pair of switches that management the gas provide to the engines have been set to “cutoff” moments earlier than the crash of Air India Flight 171, in accordance with a preliminary report from India’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau launched early Saturday in India.
A complete of 260 individuals have been killed when the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after it took off from Ahmedabad final month.
Indian investigators decided the jet was correctly configured and lifted off usually. However three seconds after takeoff, the engines’ gas switches have been minimize off. It isn’t clear why.
In response to the report, knowledge from the flight recorders present that the 2 gas management switches have been switched from the “run” place to “cutoff” shortly after takeoff. Within the cockpit voice recording, one of many pilots could be heard asking the opposite “why did he cutoff,” the report says, whereas “the opposite pilot responded that he didn’t accomplish that.”
Moments later, the report says, the gas switches have been returned to the “run” place. However by then, the airplane had begun to lose thrust and altitude. Each the engines appeared to relight, in accordance with investigators, however solely one in every of them was in a position to start producing thrust.
The report doesn’t draw any additional conclusions about why the switches have been flipped, but it surely does counsel that investigators are centered on the actions of the airplane’s pilots. The report doesn’t current any proof of mechanical failures or of a attainable hen strike, which may have incapacitated each engines on the similar time.
Family members and neighbors of Akash Patni, a 14-year-old tea vendor who died in Air India Boeing 787 Crash, mourn as they anticipate the physique at his residence, on June 15, 2025 in Ahmedabad, India. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 241 of the 242 individuals on board. The airplane crashed on June 12, 2025, after the pilot issued a mayday name to air visitors management.
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Ritesh Shukla/Getty Pictures
The primary officer was the pilot flying on the time of the crash, in accordance with investigators. The report means that there was nothing out of the strange about its takeoff — till the gas management switches have been flipped off.
There have been 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound flight when it crashed right into a medical school and burst into flames. Solely one passenger — sitting in seat 11A — was in a position to stroll away from the burning rubble. Nineteen individuals died on the bottom.
This was the primary ever hull lack of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which entered service in 2011.
