🚨 BREAKING: Scientists just dropped a bombshell about the Air India 171 disaster — and it points straight at Boeing.
Everyone thought it was a tragic malfunction. But what if it wasn’t?
🧠 New forensic data reveals the engines didn’t fail — they were shut down remotely.
No pilot input. No warning. No explanation.
And now insiders are asking:
Was the aircraft manipulated from outside… by its own maker?
Just three years ago, it looked as if the fortunes of Air India were finally looking up.
After decades of being regarded as a floundering drain on the Indian taxpayer, with a reputation for shabby services and dishevelled aircraft, a corporate takeover pledged to turn it into a “world class global airline with an Indian heart” that would outgrow all its domestic and international competitors.
Yet, after tragedy struck on 12 June, the airline is instead facing critical questions about its ability to operate safely, throwing its long-term ambitions into jeopardy.
It was less than a minute after Air India flight 171, bound for London, took off from Ahmedabad airport that it lost momentum and dropped from the sky, exploding into flames, killing 241 people on board and 19 on the ground.
‘Why did he cut off?’: what the report on the Air India flight 171 crash found
Read more
So far, only a preliminary report into the crash by the Indian aviation authority has been released, which found that both switches that controlled fuel going into the engines were cut off just after take-off, causing the plane to fatally lose altitude. Focus has reportedly turned to the actions of the pilots, amid unanswered questions over whether the switches were moved manually or due to a faulty mechanism. The report did not recommend action against Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane.
‘We have given them many warnings’
In the weeks after the crash, Air India has faced growing scrutiny after attention has turned to its own recent alleged chequered safety record. Last week, the Indian government began holding direct meetings with senior Air India management, calling for better oversight on safety and engineering.
It came as India’s aviation watchdog issued four show-cause notices to the airline last week, citing 29 safety-related violations over the past year. These breaches include lapses in crew duty norms, fatigue management and training oversight. They were based on disclosures made by the airline itself.
Air India passenger planes at the Chhatrapati Shivaji international airport in Mumbai in 2015. The airline was languishing under state ownership when the Tata Group took it over in 2022. Photograph: Divyakant Solanki/EPA
“Despite repeated warnings and earlier enforcement measures, systemic problems in compliance monitoring, crew scheduling and training oversight remain unresolved,” stated one notice. The aviation watchdog warned the airline that continued non-compliance could leave them facing heavy financial penalties or even the removal of senior executives.
It also emerged that in the days after Air India 171 crashed, more than 100 Air India pilots went on medical leave, leading to questions over the company’s handling of the welfare and morale of its pilots.
One senior Indian government official with direct knowledge of the notices told Reuters the administration was concerned that “Air India is taking things for granted” adding: “We have given them many warnings.”
Air India acknowledged receipt of the notices. “We will respond to the said notices within the stipulated period. We remain committed to the safety of our crew and passengers,” they said in a statement in response.
An ‘absolute shambles’
It was late 2021 when one of India’s largest conglomerates, the Tata Goup – which founded the airline back in 1932 – agreed to pay about $2bn to buy back Air India from the government, pledging to restore it to its former glory.
For decades, the legacy Indian airline had languished under state ownership and overturning years of neglect and underfunding was seen as a gargantuan task; at the time of the takeover, its newly appointed CEO Campbell Wilson said the airline was in an “absolute shambles”.
But Tata immediately began to make major moves to invest in, modernise and expand Air India’s fleet. Billons of dollars worth of new planes were ordered and it began a multimillion dollar refit of some of its older planes. A merger was also announced with an emerging, successful airline Vistara. Recently the airline had shown signs that its losses were narrowing.
However, while the cause of the crash in June has yet to be confirmed, it has already proved damaging for Air India and Tata, shaking consumer confidence and shining a light on a series of operational challenges and mishaps involving their aircraft.
Over the past six months, Air India received 13 notices for multiple safety violations and incidents. Recent incidents included a fire in the power unit of an Airbus A321 that had just landed from Hong Kong to Delhi, a Kochi-Mumbai flight that veered off the runaway and suffered damage to an engine cover, and a Delhi-Kolkata flight was forced to abort take-off at the last minute.
Despite the pledged upgrades, customer complaints about the standard of Air India aircraft – including dishevelled and uncomfortable interiors, broken armrests, faulty entertainment systems and frequent delays on international flights – have also continued, sometimes with significant consequences; in March, Air India Flight 126 from Chicago to Delhi had to turn back after 10 hours when 11 out of the plane’s 12 toilets became clogged.
In June last year, hundreds of cabin crew working for Air India express went on strike over working conditions. The budget airline is also now under investigation by the EU’s aviation agency after reports it did not change the engine parts of an Airbus A320 in a timely manner.
In a memo to Air India staff after the release of the preliminary report into June’s crash, CEO Wilson emphasised that it had found “no mechanical or maintenance issues with the aircraft or engines, and that all mandatory maintenance tasks had been completed”. Air India also found “no issues” with the fuel switches after it completed a full inspection of its Boeing planes. A full report is due next year.
Jitender Bhargava, a former Air India executive, said that most major international airlines had faced similar periods of scrutiny but emphasised that the airline had a responsibility to be open and transparent.
“They need to clearly spell out what steps they are taking: for the families of the victims who want closure, for the operators of Boeing planes who want answers and for the millions and millions of people who watched footage of that plane come crashing to the ground on their televisions around the world,” he said.
Nonetheless, Bhargava believed this would only be a “temporary setback” for Air India’s ambitions. “It’s always the case that after such an incident, the regulatory agency is on their toes and an airline faces greater pressure surveillance for its safety record,” he said. “It’s not a reflection on the overall safety track record of Air India.”
A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India flight that crashed last month supports the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines, said a source briefed on U.S. officials’ early assessment of evidence.
The first officer was at the controls of the Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab 787 and asked the captain why he moved the fuel switches into a position that starved the engines of fuel and requested that he restore the fuel flow, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation.
The U.S. assessment is not contained in a formal document, said the source, who emphasized the cause of the June 12 crash in Ahmedabad, India, that killed 260 people remains under investigation.
There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence from the conversation points to the captain, according to the early assessment.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the investigation into the crash, said in a statement on Thursday that “certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting.” It added the investigation was ongoing and it remained too early to draw definitive conclusions.
‘
The Wall Street Journal first reported similar information on Wednesday about the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade.
The Federation of Indian Pilots, through its Indian law firm APJ-SLG Law Offices, sent a legal notice to Reuters about a July 17 story published by the news agency which referenced the WSJ article.
The notice asked Reuters to desist from publication of any content “that speculates on the cause of the crash or attributes fault to any individuals, especially deceased pilots, in the absence of official confirmation and final report.”
Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, and under international rules, a final report is expected within a year of an accident.
A preliminary report released by the AAIB on Saturday said one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel and “the other pilot responded that he did not do so.”
Investigators did not identify which remarks were made by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and which by First Officer Clive Kunder, who had total flying experience of 15,638 hours and 3,403 hours, respectively.
The AAIB’s preliminary report said the fuel switches had switched from “run” to “cutoff” a second apart just after takeoff, but it did not say how they were moved.
Almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground, closed-circuit TV footage showed a backup energy source called a ram air turbine had deployed, indicating a loss of power from the engines.
The London-bound plane began to lose thrust, and after reaching a height of 650 feet, the jet started to sink.
The fuel switches for both engines were turned back to “run”, and the airplane automatically tried restarting the engines, the report said.
But the plane was too low and too slow to be able to recover, aviation safety expert John Nance told Reuters.
The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college campus, the report said, killing 19 people on the ground and 241 of the 242 on board the 787.
NO SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS
In an internal memo on Monday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the preliminary report found no mechanical or maintenance faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out.
The AAIB’s preliminary report had no safety recommendations for Boeing or engine manufacturer GE (GE.N), opens new tab.
After the report was released, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing privately issued notifications that the fuel switch locks on Boeing planes are safe, a document seen by Reuters showed and four sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has been assisting with the Air India investigation and its Chair Jennifer Homendy has been fully briefed on all aspects, a board spokesperson said. That includes the cockpit voice recording and details from the flight data recorder that the NTSB team assisted the AAIB in reading out, the spokesperson added.
“The safety of international air travel depends on learning as much as we can from these rare events so that industry and regulators can improve aviation safety,” Homendy said in a statement. “And if there are no immediate safety issues discovered, we need to know that as well.”
The circumstantial evidence increasingly indicates that a crew member flipped the engine fuel switches, Nance said, given there was “no other rational explanation” that was consistent with the information released to date.
Nonetheless, investigators “still have to dig into all the factors” and rule out other possible contributing factors which would take time, he said.
The Air India crash has rekindled debate over adding flight deck cameras, known as cockpit image recorders, on airliners.
Nance said investigators likely would have benefited greatly from having video footage of the cockpit during the Air India flight.
