Air India Boeing 787 crash report says fuel switches cut off
Air India Boeing 787 crash report says fuel switches cut off
59 comments
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https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/11/india/air-india-crash-report-intl-latam
This article has a photo of the switches in question, and goes into more detail about how they work.
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So I know there has to be a reason why these switches are vitally important but doesn't it seem weird that you can take a catastrophic action like turning the fuel supply off when you're in mid-takeoff? If you try and put a modern car in reverse at 65 MPH, the car is like "haha no" and ignores you.
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From the article...
The fuel switches were “designed to be intentionally moved,” according to CNN safety analyst David Soucie, who said cases in which all fuel switches were turned off accidentally are “extremely rare.”
“Throughout the years, those switches have been improved to make sure that they cannot be accidentally moved and that they’re not automatic. They don’t move themselves in any manner,” Soucie said on Friday.
And the photo of the throttle (middle) and fuel cutoff switches (bottom):
There's just one-level-deeper of questions I'd have here. How were the switches designed such that they prevented accidental activation? Because it looks like they just get simply flipped down. Could it be pull-out-and-down? Or maybe there's a lot of resistance during the switch action?
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You can also just throttle back, which would have the same effect.
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So, so many poorly informed people in here jumping to conclusions, many of which were already ruled out in the preliminary report.
I don't know any more than what's in that document myself.
Perhaps some of the armchair aircraft safety investigators in here might want to at least skim the details before coming up with wild theories? Or at least provide reasoning and evidence to support them.
May those who lost their lives, and their loved ones, find peace and closure as best they can once we have all the details. Until then, it would be crass to speculate, especially as non-experts not privvy to the details of the investigation.
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If I remember correctly, those switches need to be physically lifted up and rotated for the engines to switch from RUN to CUTOFF. there's also physical guards there to prevent pilots from knocking them. here's a diagram of the layout (source).
I've read theories that the pilot who manipulated the fuel switches could've mistook them for the stabiliser cutout switch but the switches are very different. the timing is also sus because it would've been at just the right time for things to have not been recoverable. 10 seconds earlier and the takeoff could've been aborted, 10 seconds later and the plane could've had enough altitude and speed to land in a safer area. also the way the pilot reacted to the other pilot suggests he saw the other pilot shut off the fuel to both engines one after the other and was in a state of shock
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They lift up over a gate and you move them down to shut off, rather than turning. There’s no guard over them though. They’re not really close to any other switches you’d be manipulating at any time, especially right after takeoff, and they are a different shape than any other switch (Boeing likes to shape their switches differently so that if you grab the wrong one you’ll feel it). I cannot imagine how one could accidentally move one, let alone both switches do cutoff. But sometimes my brain does inexplicably dumb shit, so I dunno.
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by guards I meant the guard brackets which help prevent accidental movement (source) but I agree I just can't see this being done accidentally. the look and feel of the switches are just so different it'd be almost like mistaking a red light for a green one with normal colour vision or something. it's still early days so i'm sure more will come out about the history of the pilots with time. if this does turn out to be intentional it's pretty scary because it's something that's unrecoverable at that phase of flight if it happens and that needs to not happen again
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When I watched the crash video, I thought that something cut the fuel off. Because that was the most likely reason for all engines to stop.
So, if the pilot or copilot did not do it (I assume it is not just a switch that you can trigger accidentally), what other system has the capability to switch off all fuel lines? Fire suppression systems? Some general "switch off"? And how hard would it be to restart fuel supply? Is it possible to override e.g. such a fire suppression system?
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Both the left and right switchs were moved to 'cutoff', one pilot recognized this and asked the other pilot why, the other pilot denied doing it, then the switches were returned to 'run' and the engines began to re-light (this is all straight from the black box recorder). It was too late to recover though, so the plane went down.
There is a mechanical detent requiring you to pull each switch out, then down. They had to be moved deliberately.
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So either this was a suicide, or a coverup for just another Boeing failure.
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The report specifically says that "cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec". They were later switched back to RUN. It wasn't some other system.
This is such a bizarre situation that with just the voice recording we will probably never know what really happened.
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one would think such a fail state should be only accessible after the user has bypassed and confirmed the action.
let's be honest, do we trust boeing at this point?
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is it clear that FADEC cannot cut-off via software?
59 comments
Given the mechanical saftey built into those switches, Unfortunately I guess that leaves us with two reasonable possibilities:
A) One of the pilots was somehow mistaken on the function of those switches and toggled them when they should not have. Then they genuinely thought they hadn't when asked why they had cutoff fuel.
Or
B) One of the pilots chose to cut off fuel supply to both engines, intentionally bringing down the plane. They then lied to the other pilot when asked why they'd cutoff fuel.
You can't exactly expect a plane to keep flying when you've commanded the engines to stop running/taken away their fuel at such a critical time...
both pilots were experienced and had also passed breathalyser tests before the flight too (source)
Breathalysers don't detect tired or suicidal pilots.
The interim report stated copilot was pilot flying meaning they only focus on flying and he had also just flown already today. Captain however was his first flight in his shift and was also pilot monitoring.
Could have been cut off by one pilot as part of a troubleshooting attempt, maybe? Thinking “it’s not cut off, just a temporary state of affairs” or something like that. Just trying to think of ways this could be a miscommunication instead of blatant misconduct :(
There is no procedure that involves cutting off fuel to both engines while in-flight; one at a time, but not both. Then, there is no procedure that ever involves touching those controls during takeoff. Finally; there would be communication between the pilots discussing any such troubleshooting, they wouldn't just take it upon themselves to start flipping switches without at the very least letting the other pilot know what they're doing. Particularly when it comes to troubleshooting; there is a strict set of checklists they go through as a team, with one reading out questions, the other responding with data/answers from the instruments and the first confirming that response.
These were both experienced pilots with ample flight hours; they knew what they were doing at those controls. I'm not going to throw human error out the window entirely, but it's not looking very likely unfortunately.
Either that plane was brought down intentionally, or there was a stunning error in judgment wildly disregarding procedure in that cockpit that was not communicated at all. (note: the mics record to the blackbox continuously, they're not ptt, if one of the pilots had said something, it'd be on the tape.)
There’s no communication between the two pilots before the switches were moved to cutoff to suggest they encountered any problems prior to fuel cutoff.