Engine Fuel Supply Cut off Named Key Reason for Air India Jet Crash, Says Report

On Saturday, media reports indicated that the key reason for the Air India crash is a cut in the fuel supply to the engines.

The plane was crashed shortly before taking off, causing the killing of 260 people.

According to the report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, cited by CNN, the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, starving the engines of fuel.

Investigators checked the data out of the plane’s “black box” recorders.

The aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel cutoff switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec,” according to the report.

“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report reads.

“When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engines full authority dual engine control automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction,” the report added.