On July 12, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released its preliminary report into the Air India flight AI 171 tragedy, hinting that pilot action caused the crash. This comes exactly after a month when the Air India flight took off from Ahmedabad only to crash within minutes, killing 260 people, making it one of the worst aviation tragedies in India’s recent history. Many veterans and experts of the aviation industry are raising doubts over the AAIB report.
The preliminary report revealed that the plane’s engine fuel cutoff switches were flipped from run to cutoff. It gave details of the cockpit voice recording with one pilot asking the other why he “did the cut-off”, to which the other replies that he didn’t. The recording doesn’t clarify who said what. Data shows the switches were then moved to “run” position, but the plane crashed within seconds. While the preliminary report does not throw any light on how the switches were moved to cut-off, speculations rife about the role of pilots—56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal and 32-year-old Clive Kunder. Soon after the investigation, the Airline Pilots’ Association of India said in a statement that the tone and direction of the preliminary report suggest a “bias toward pilot error.” The group, rejecting the “presumption,” called for a “fair, fact based inquiry.”
The lacuna in the report is it did not identify who said what. With no detailed conversation between the pilots, the prelim report that also does not include the full transcript of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recording caused doubts on what exactly happened. Yet some quarters are jumping into conclusions when the report in itself is a primary study. To assume that the pilots may have committed suicide is preposterous.
Considering that the report is a primary study, many questions are left to be answered. An aircraft is an extremely sophisticated and complex machine, and detailed and painstaking investigations are required to ascertain the exact cause or combination of causes. The odds that an aviation accident has a single trigger are rare; there could be many, or one leading to another. The AAIB is expected to release the final probe report within a year of the crash, as per international guidelines. Even so, a preliminary report too takes 3 to 6 months after the crash. Only a final report would lay the correct facts on the cause of the accident and make recommendations. What is gathered at the moment are just fragments. It is not certain what really happened inside the cockpit and why. Till all answers are found it is better to let speculations rest as it will do more harm than good. One month of the tragedy the deceased pilots must be remembered for their lives in service because the dead cannot speak for themselves.
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