NEW DELHI: Two major commercial pilots’ associations have rejected claims that human error caused an Air India crash that killed 260 people after a preliminary investigation report found the aircraft´s engine fuel switches had been turned off.
The report, issued on Saturday by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the June 12 disaster, but indicated that one pilot asked the other why he cut off fuel.
One pilot can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he had cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.
After the switches flipped, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner immediately began to lose thrust and altitude, according to the report. No more detail about the cockpit dialogue between the pilots was revealed.
It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight’s captain and which by the first officer or which pilot transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” just before the crash.
The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said it was “deeply disturbed by speculative narratives […] particularly the reckless and unfounded insinuation of pilot suicide”.
“There is absolutely no basis for such a claim at this stage,” it said in a statement on Sunday, adding, “it is deeply insensitive to the individuals and families involved”.
“To casually suggest pilot suicide without verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting and a disservice to the dignity of the profession,” it said.
The initial probe finding sparked speculation by several independent aviation experts that deliberate or inadvertent pilot action may have caused the London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner to crash soon after take-off from Ahmedabad in western India.
The ICPA was referring to a number of aviation experts suggesting engine fuel control switches can only be moved deliberately and manually.
United States-based aviation safety expert John Cox earlier said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. “You can’t bump them and they move,” he told the Reuters news agency.
The Airline Pilots’ Association of India (ALPA India), another pilots’ body with 800 members, also accused the probe agency of “secrecy” surrounding the investigation, saying “suitably qualified personnel” were not involved in it.
“We feel that the investigation is being driven in a direction presuming the guilt of pilots and we strongly object to this line of thought,” ALPA India president Sam Thomas said in a statement issued on Saturday.
ALPA — which claims 100,000 members worldwide — also requested to the AAIB that it as “observers so as to provide the requisite transparency in the investigations”.
Meanwhile, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the probe into last month’s crash is far from over, and it is unwise to jump to any premature conclusions.
Wilson added: “The preliminary report identified no cause nor made any recommendations, so I urge everyone to avoid drawing premature conclusions as the investigation is far from over.”
The crash killed all but one of the 242 people on board as well as 19 people on the ground.
