Air India flight crash pilot: Who is the man believed to have cut flight’s fuel supplies moments before it hit ground
Cockpit recordings of the fatal Air India flight in June suggests it was the pilot, Sumeet Sabharwal, who cut the fuel supply to the engines before the plane crashed.
Sabharwal, 56, joined Air India in 1994 and has logged 15,638 hours of flying time, with 8,596 on the 787 aircraft. He flew a Boeing 777 until he trained up between 2014 and 2015 to fly the newer Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Known among his peers for being calm under pressure, he had never been involved in any major incident in his career until June 12.
Cockpit recordings suggest it was him who cut the fuel supply to the engines of Air India flight 171, causing it to lose thrust and crash into the ground. According to The Telegraph, before the crash in June, where 260 people died just after take-off in Ahmedabad, he said to a security guard at his apartment complex: “Please, take care of papa. I will be back soon.”
Three days before his death, Sabharwal told Pushkaraj, his father, that he was planning to resign from Air India and permanently return home to take care of him. He reportedly had struggled to come to terms with the death of his mother in 2022 and moved from Delhi to Mumbai, to be closer to his father. He had also separated from his wife.
The Telegraph revealed that Air India crash investigators were examining the medical records of Sabharwal amid claims that he suffered from depression and mental health problems. His last Class I medical exam, which evaluates a pilot’s psycho-physical capacity, was passed in September.
According to a US assessment of the black box data, Sabharwal is likely to have cut off the fuel supply by moving the switches to the cut-off position before it glided down toward the ground and crashed in Ahmedabad. Clive Kunder, the first officer who was flying the Boeing 787-8, questioned why the captain had moved switches to the cut-off position.
The assessment follows a preliminary report released by Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) that found that switches controlling fuel flow to the jet’s two engines were turned off, leading to a catastrophic loss of thrust at take-off. While the initial report does not draw any conclusion, it has raised questions about the actions of two pilots.