NEW DELHI: Following a preliminary inquiry that raised suspicions about the flight crew, associations of Indian pilots are disputing assertions that the 260-person Air India jet disaster last month was the result of human error. On June 12, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner headed for London crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in Gujarat, a state in western India.
Shortly after takeoff, both of the aircraft’s fuel-control switches switched to the position that stopped fuel from the engines, according to a study published over the weekend by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
It simply cited the audio recording from the cockpit, where “one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he cut off,” and “the other pilot responded that he did not do so.” It did not say who switched off the switches.
Following the first results and the early media and internet reactions to them, the Indian Commercial Pilots Association and the Airline Pilots’ Association of India released comments denouncing speculative narratives and assumptions regarding the pilots’ culpability, according to ALPA member and accident investigator Capt. Kishore Chinta, both organisations have “raised red flags on the selective release of information” by the AAIB, as reported by Arab News.
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