The initial report into the 12 June plane crash that killed 260 people shows the flight lasted only 40 seconds between takeoff and the catastrophic impact in a residential area in the city of Ahmedabad.
The report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is based on preliminary facts and evidence collected during the investigation, and as such is subject to change.
Bernard Lavelle, principal analyst at BL Aviation Consulting, said: “I think the focus now from the Indian [AAIB] is to try and understand why those switches were put into this idle position. I think, unfortunately, that’s going to create lots of speculation. Was it some kind of mechanical issue? Was it an accidental movement of those switches, or unfortunately, people are going to [ask], was it a deliberate attempt to crash the aircraft? We don’t know.
Why have other Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners not been grounded?
When the door of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane’s door was blown out mid-air on a flight from Portland, Oregon, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) immediately grounded 171 Boeing 737-9 MAX aircraft operated by US airlines or in US territory.
Bereaved relatives are still waiting for clear answers about the crash (Photo: Rafiq Maqbool/AP)
In December 2018, the FAA issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) that stated some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged.
The preliminary report into the fatal aviation incident states Air India said the suggested inspections were not carried out as the SAIB was advisory and not mandatory.
He added: “I would have thought that the FAA should revisit this advisory and perhaps make it mandatory for all aircraft that have the relevant fuel control switches. If nothing else, it would provide comfort for passengers flying the relevant aircraft. We will have to wait and see if they do this.”
“They’d normally be used, in particular, in two instances: in flight if there was an engine fire, you’d want to cut off fuel to the relevant engine,” he said.
How quickly do aircraft react to fuel switch changes?
Mr Lavelle compared the fuel switch to a light fixture. He said: “If you cut off the fuel, those engines stop very, very quickly, almost like turning the light off in a room. And that would appear to be the cause of the engine failure. The engines themselves seem to be running absolutely fine, but if you take fuel away from the engines, of course they stop running.”
“There’s only four seconds difference between the two engines being reset. So the first engine started to get some thrust within that four second gap, but the second engine didn’t have time to reignite,” he said.
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