India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau has released a preliminary report on the Air India June crash, which has revealed shocking details.
On Friday, July 11, the reports shared by the bureau pointed out that the fuel to the engine was cut off.
The London-bound plane crashed near the Ahmedabad airport just moments after it took off from the runway, killing everyone on board but one.
According to the initial report, the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, which prompted the flight to take a dive back to earth right away.
Investigators were able to get data out of the black boxes, including 49 hours of flight data and two hours of cockpit audio.
As per the report, when the aircraft was flying with the speed of 180 knots, the plane's engines were shut off one after another.
The official documents further state, "In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so."
Shortly after that, the switches were reversed back to where they should have been, and the engines were in the process of powering back when the crash happened.
CNN safety analyst David Soucie noted that the fuel switches in the plane were "designed to be intentionally moved," sharing that incidents where all switches were turned off of an aircraft accidentally are "extremely rare."
Moreover, the captain of the flight was a 56-year-old male who flew over 15,000 hours in his career, while the first officer was a 32-year-old male with over 3,400 flying hours.
The crash took 260 lives, including people on board and a few who were on the ground when flight AI171 hit a medical hostel.
Air India has accepted the initial report and shared that it will continue cooperating with authorities in the investigation.
