Nearly five months after a tragic plane crash in India that claimed 260 lives, the investigation into the disaster has become deeply controversial, drawing attention from various quarters including India’s Supreme Court. The crash involved Air India Flight 171, which was traveling from Ahmedabad in western India to London. The aircraft crashed into a building just 32 seconds after takeoff on 12 June, raising urgent questions about what caused such a catastrophic failure so soon after departure.
In the weeks following the accident, India’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) took charge of the investigation. Since the aircraft and its engines were American-made, US officials also participated in the inquiry. The AAIB released a preliminary report in July, as is standard practice for major air accidents. Such reports typically summarize the facts known at the time, based on early examination of the crash site and data downloaded from the flight data recorder (FDR), but they usually avoid making definitive conclusions about the cause of the accident.
However, the preliminary report released by the AAIB became a source of controversy. The 15-page document contained two critical paragraphs that many believe unfairly implicated the pilots. According to the report, shortly after takeoff, the fuel cutoff switches—which are normally only used during engine start-up and shutdown—were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position. This action would have cut off fuel to the engines, causing them to lose thrust rapidly. The switches were then moved back to try to restart the engines, but it was too late to prevent the crash.
Adding to the intrigue, the cockpit voice recorder captured a brief exchange where one pilot asked the other why he had cut off the fuel, with the reply being a denial of having done so. This indirect dialogue sparked intense speculation about the actions and responsibilities of the two pilots: Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his first officer Clive Kunder, who was flying the plane at the time of the crash.
The suggestion that the fuel cutoff might have been triggered deliberately or accidentally by the pilots fueled widespread debate. Robert Sumwalt, former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the United States, stated in an interview that the incident did not seem to be caused by mechanical failure, but rather by someone shutting down the fuel supply—whether intentionally or by mistake remained unclear. Indian aviation safety consultant Captain Mohan Ranganathan went further by implying that pilot suicide could not be ruled out, hinting at possible medical issues affecting the pilot.
These theories met strong opposition from lawyers and aviation safety experts representing victims’ families and the wider aviation community. Mike Andrews, a lawyer representing families of the crash victims, criticized how the limited information had been presented. He argued that focusing on two brief and decontextualized pieces of information from the cockpit voice recorder unfairly blamed the pilots without considering the complexity of modern aircraft systems, which have many potential points of failure.
Supporting this line of reasoning, Captain Amit Singh, founder of the Safety Matters Foundation—which promotes aviation safety culture in India—conducted his own analysis and concluded that the evidence strongly supports the theory that an electrical disturbance caused the engine shutdown. He proposed that a fault in the Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system, the computerized engine management system, could have triggered a fuel cutoff command electronically, without any physical movement of the switches by the pilots. According to this interpretation, the cockpit voice recorder may have recorded the command to shut off fuel as if it were a manual action, even though the switches might have remained untouched until the pilots attempted to restart the engines.
Captain Singh also voiced concerns about the investigation process itself, telling the BBC that the preliminary report appeared biased by suggesting pilot error without fully disclosing the technical anomalies and electrical issues that could have played a critical role.
The controversy reached the highest levels of India’s judiciary when the Supreme Court became involved. Pushkarraj Sabharwal, the 91-year-old father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, petitioned the court for an independent judicial inquiry into the accident, seeking to clear his son’s name. In a hearing, Justice Surya Kant reassured the grieving father, stating, “Nobody can blame him for anything,” emphasizing that it was unfair to place the burden of blame on Captain Sabharwal. The court is expected to hold further hearings in early November.
Adding to doubts about the preliminary report, the US-based Foundation for Aviation Safety (FAS), led by Ed Pi