Indian and global pilot groups on Tuesday urged fellow pilots to refrain from speculating on the Air India Flight 171 crash, amid concerns that a poorly written preliminary report on the accident itself has fuelled confusion.

Their appeals follow a swirl of narratives sparked by aviation experts and pilots reading the claims and omissions in the initial report as hints of either a cover-up or a deliberate act by a pilot to crash the plane.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB), in its preliminary report released on Saturday, said the switches controlling the fuel supply to the aircraft’s two engines had “transitioned” from “run” to “cutoff” moments after its takeoff. A few seconds later, both switches were moved back from the “cutoff” to “run” mode. Both engines relighted, but the aircraft was flying too low to recover.

Aviation experts who have reviewed the AAIB report say its language appears carefully chosen. The report states the switches “transitioned” from run to cutoff, a phrasing that, while technically correct, implies human action without stating it outright.

Multiple pilots have said the switches cannot move on their own. They point out that the one-second lag between the two switches being flipped is consistent with manual operation.

“There’s no mystery about what brought the aircraft down,” one aviation analyst said. “The fuel was cut off, the engines lost thrust, and the aircraft began to fall. What we don’t understand is why all the data isn’t being released. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders likely already contain everything investigators need to reconstruct what happened.”

The Airlines Pilots Association of India (ALPA-I) and the International Federation of Pilots Association (IFALPA) have cautioned against drawing inferences or conclusions from the preliminary report, asserting that the investigation is ongoing.

“While this preliminary report by its very nature raises many questions, it doesn’t provide answers, and any extrapolation of its content can only be regarded as guesswork which is not helpful to the good conduct of the investigation,” the IFALPA said.

ALPA-I has also urged its members not to engage in “public speculation or personal analysis”, saying the preliminary report is intended only to disseminate facts and document the investigation’s status. ALPA-I has roughly 1,000 members, while the IFALPA represents nearly 148,000 pilots worldwide.

But behind the formal language lies mounting frustration. Senior ALPA-I executives say the report’s wording and presentation have themselves sown confusion and fostered speculation — including a presumption of “pilot guilt” without evidence.

A key point of concern is a brief exchange cited by the report: one pilot is said to have asked the other why he had cut off the fuel, to which the second pilot replied that he had not. Shortly after that exchange, the air traffic controllers heard the Mayday call, seconds before the crash.

ALPA-I president Captain Sam Thomas said presenting this isolated exchange — without context and without insights into what was said before or after — was irresponsible.

“That single sentence tells us nothing,” said Thomas, who is himself a pilot rated for both Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft. “It shouldn’t be used to make any interpretations about what happened.”

Wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane sits on the open ground, outside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport

Thomas and others havecriticised the report as “amateurish,” claiming it appears to downplay possible mechanical or design issues while reinforcing a narrative of human error.

“The report is unsigned. It’s unclear who’s accountable for it. It was released almost in a clandestine mannerpast midnight, after global media had already reported on its contents,” Thomas told The Telegraph. “It also doesn’t disclose the full cockpit conversation.”

Another ALPA-I pilot pointed out that the report omits even basic flight data, such as the aircraft’s maximum altitude — critical information, he said, because the low altitude after takeoffis what ultimately prevented recovery once the engines relit.

The pilots’ union has also iterated long-standing concerns about the composition of the AAIB team. “We’ve repeatedly asked theAAIB to include experienced airline pilots — even as observers — in such investigations,” Thomas said. “They haven’t responded.”