US Body Flagged Potential Fuel Control Switch Issue On Boeing 737 Jets In 2018, Read In Details
New Delhi : While a shift in fuel control switches has been cited as the likely cause behind the Air India flight (AI 171) crash, the preliminary probe report spotlights a key issue flagged by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) way back in 2018 on Boeing 737 jets. Since it was just an advisory, it wasn’t deemed an unsafe condition.
The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 jets, including Air India’s VT-ANB, which crashed on June 12, killing 260 people. Since the bulletin by the FAA was advisory and not mandatory, Air India did not perform the recommended inspections. These switches regulate fuel flow into a plane’s engines.
In the case of the doomed flight, the report mentioned that the aircraft’s fuel control switches transitioned from “RUN” to “CUTOFF” position within a second of each other three seconds after lift-off.
However, the report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) does not mention whether it was inadvertent or deliberate. The report, however, mentions the chat between the pilots caught on the cockpit voice recorder. One of the pilots can be heard asking the other why he cut off the fuel. The other pilot said he did not.
Former joint secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) Sanat Kaul suggested that the pilots could not be faulted as they were very seasoned. “We can’t fault the pilots, who were very seasoned. So, something was seriously wrong with the system provided by Boeing that the fuel tanks were switched off. We will only know when a full investigation is done,” Kaul told India Today. The commanding pilot was Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, who had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours. His co-pilot was Clive Kunder, 32, who had 3,403 hours of total experience.
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