Revealed: Air India Pilot Cut Fuel Before Crash
Hold onto your coffee mugs because a fresh AAIB report finds the Air India 787’s fuel switches were deliberately set to off mere seconds after takeoff. I’m practically vibrating here—imagine a state-of-the-art Dreamliner climbing into the sky and then, boom, the engines go mute like someone flipped the mute button on your morning news. According to India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, both engine fuel switches on flight AI201 were moved from RUN to CUTOFF just one second apart, only to be snapped back on about ten seconds later. News of that jaw-dropping sequence comes straight from the probe’s official findings.
The Wall Street Journal dug into the black-box audio and reports that co-pilot Clive Kunder can be heard asking Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, “Why did you cut it off?” To which Sabharwal, known among flight school classmates as “Sad Sack” because he always looked so doleful, firmly denies any deliberate shutdown. Fuel switches are typically toggled on the ground during engine start and off after landing or in emergencies—not mid-flight on a smooth climb—so doing it by mistake is practically unheard of. Experts told the WSJ that the physical motion is tough to pull off accidentally, which makes this discovery even more baffling.
Witnesses on the ground say the jet lifted normally on June 12 out of Ahmedabad, bound for London, and then inexplicably sagged half a mile above a dorm at B.J. Medical College. The crash claimed 260 lives—241 passengers and crew perished, while one man walked away with barely a scratch. It’s painfully clear that even though the switches were flipped back into RUN and the engine control systems kicked in a recovery sequence, it was tragically too late to avert disaster.
Digging deeper, The Sunday Times shares that Sabharwal had quietly planned to retire from flying to care for his ailing father. He reportedly rang home just before pushback to say he’d call once he landed in London. That call never happened. Neighbors described him as devoted and soft-spoken, which makes the idea of a purposeful shutdown all the more perplexing.
The AAIB is still probing motive and method, but so far no definitive reason has emerged for why Sabharwal would cut fuel mid-air. Aviation authorities and Air India executives are combing through training records, cockpit procedures, and psychological profiles as they try to piece together what really happened in those fateful seconds. There’s even talk of refining switch designs to prevent such mishaps in the future.
This chilling revelation flips aviation safety debates on their head—were these toggles vulnerable to human error, intentional sabotage, or some freak mechanical glitch? The final report is pending, and until then, every detail feels like a clue in a thriller no one wanted to star in. I swear, I could talk about this all day.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and Wall Street Journal, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, The Sunday Times, TMZ
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
