A blizzard of theories has swept over the crash of Air India’s Flight 171, with speculation fuelled by omissions in the preliminary crash report, questions about the probe’s transparency and whispers of a conspiracy to blame the pilots, despite appeals for restraint.
The speculative ideas thrown up by aviation experts and pilots on social media range from an unexplained failure of the engines to suggestions that authorities have withheld the full cockpit voice recording to avoid revealing dialogue that could be interpreted as incriminating.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) had in its preliminary report on the June 12 Ahmedabad crash said cockpit switches that control fuel supply to the two engines had “transitioned” from “run” to “cutoff” moments after takeoff, and within a second of each other.
Seconds later, both switches had been moved back to “run” and the engines relighted, but the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which had begun losing altitude even before it crossed the airport perimeter wall, was too low to recover from the fall.
The report also said that one pilot had asked the other why he had cut off fuel, and the other had responded that he had not.
Members of the Airline Pilots Association of India (ALPA-I) have questioned the AAIB’s selective release of cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data and the sparse detail in the first report, which they say appears to hint at “pilot guilt” without evidence.
Earlier this week, India’s directorate-general of civil aviation (DGCA) asked airlines to inspect the fuel switch locks in their Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft, citing similar actions by airlines elsewhere in the world.
A spokesperson for Honeywell International, which manufactures fuel control switches for several Boeing aircraft models, was quoted as saying: “We do not comment on rumours or speculation. Any questions on the incident should be directed to the appropriate investigating agencies.”
The company said the DGCA’s preliminary report had noted no defects in the switches since 2023.
ALPA-I and the International Federation of Pilots Association have through separate statements urged restraint, urging pilots and the public to wait for the final report.
Still, many pilots insist that the switches could not have moved without deliberate manual action.
“The fact that this happened one second apart, that’s a red flag to me that this was done intentionally,” said Ryan Bodenheimer, a former US combat pilot and aviation YouTuber.
He also pointed to the exchange where one pilot asked the other about the cutoff. If it had been a malfunction, the dialogue would’ve been different — more like, ‘What’s happening?’
Others have underlined that the report leaves too many questions unanswered.
“The AAIB hasn’t ruled out electronic faults or signal malfunctions,” said Saurabh Bhatnagar, a former airline pilot, speaking to HW News, a digital news channel.
BJP parliamentarian and commercial pilot Rajiv Pratap Rudy had suggested that the pilots may have toggled the switches to restart the engines after a flame-out.
“There’s some preliminary evidence that engine power was declining,” Rudy said. “It appears both engines flamed out — meaning they stopped.”
US aviation attorney Mary Schiavo has noted previous Boeing 787 incidents where a dual engine thrust rollback — caused by software glitches — had left aircraft vulnerable.
“It’s impossible at this moment to blame the pilots. The plane is suspect unless proven otherwise,” she told Mojo Story, a digital news channel.
But other experts say the timeline of events as described by the preliminary report doesn’t support that theory. If a flame-out or a thrust loss had preceded the switch movements, they argue, it would have shown up on the digital flight data recorder — and the AAIB would have noted it.
The preliminary report makes no mention of thrust loss in the critical seconds between takeoff at 1:38:39pm and the switches flipping at 1:38:42pm, when the aircraft hit 180 knots.
“Any such event before the switches moved should and would have been documented,” one expert said.
The limited CVR excerpts too have drawn concern. Pilots say that during takeoff, a standard set of callouts occurs: acceleration, rotation, gear-up.
Immediately after takeoff, one pilot would say ‘positive rate’, followed by ‘gear up’, one pilot said. “The full CVR would resolve many of the questions being asked.”
Greg Feith, a former US air safety investigator, said it was likely that the AAIB knew who said what in the cockpit but had chosen not to reveal it.
“For specific reasons, they chose not to identify which pilot spoke or acted,” he said on the Flight Safety Detectives YouTube channel.
Feith is among those who believe the report points to “an intentional shutdown”.