Voice recordings from the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which crashed near Ahmedabad on 12 June, reportedly capture the first officer urgently asking: “Why did you cut off?” while the captain remained calm, according to US media citing unnamed officials. The AAIB confirmed that both engines lost thrust and the fuel-control switches moved to “cut-off” just one second apart, but did not attribute the action to either pilot or speculate on intent.
Anonymous sources suggest the captain, Sumeet Sabharwal, managed the controls. US aviation experts argue that the first officer, Clive Kunder, would have been busy flying the aircraft during takeoff, making Sabharwal more likely to have manipulated the switches. They note the switches are guarded and cannot shift without deliberate manual action.
Indian pilot associations have sharply rebuked these characterisations. The Federation of Indian Pilots denounced the US reports as baseless and vowed legal action, alleging selective interpretation and misrepresentation of the AAIB’s findings. FIP president CS Randhawa cautioned against sensationalist “pilot suicide” speculation and drew parallels to a past Boeing fuel-control malfunction in Japan in 2019.
Air India’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, reiterated that both pilots had passed all mandatory health and alcohol checks, and that technical inspections of the fuel systems across the Boeing 787 fleet have revealed no defects. He has urged staff and the public to avoid premature judgments before the complete AAIB investigation concludes.
Experts outside India, including US and Indian aviation analysts, underline the need to probe possible technical causes. Mary Schiavo, a US aviation analyst, warns that software glitches—like the thrust-control malfunction in a Boeing 787 flight near Osaka in 2019—could misinterpret flight mode and automatically move switches. Captain Mohan Ranganathan, an Indian safety expert, emphasised that the switch movement requires manual pulling and cannot occur accidentally.
The AAIB’s preliminary report also highlighted a 2018 advisory from the US Federal Aviation Administration warning of potential flaws in the Boeing fuel-control system. Although Air India chose not to act on that notice, the aircraft had undergone routine maintenance and no prior issues had been flagged with the system.
Investigators are expected to examine black‑box data, cockpit voice transcripts, system logs, maintenance history, and pilot medical records. The probe now includes aviation psychologists to assess human factors, as well as evaluations of Boeing’s throttle control modules and related hardware. International experts from the US and UK are contributing to the inquiry in line with global aviation protocols.
This crash marks the first fatal hull loss involving the 787 Dreamliner since its introduction in 2011 and remains India's deadliest aviation disaster in over a decade, with 260 lives lost, including those on the ground. The deployment of the ram air turbine and the rapid descent suggest power was cut almost instantly after takeoff.
Amid mounting speculation, calls for transparency have intensified. Advocacy groups are urging the AAIB to publish the full cockpit transcript and system logs, while families of the crash victims seek definitive answers. The unfolding investigation is expected to shed light on whether a catastrophic technical malfunction, inadvertent switch activation, or deliberate human action precipitated the tragedy.