Air India crash: Pilots' body slams report claiming captain turned off fuel switches
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Air India crash: Pilots' body slams report claiming captain turned off fuel switches")
A crane removing aeroplane's tail from the wreckage after the June 12 Air India flight 171 crash, is pictured in a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad. Photograph: (AFP)
Air India crash: The AAIB probe report on the plane crash, which killed 260 people, had not mentioned that the fuel control switches were turned off because of the pilot's mistake.
Air India crash report: Reacting to a Western media report that claimed the captain of the crashed Air India plane had switched off the fuel switches of the aircraft seconds after takeoff, Captain CS Randhawa, the president of the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), said on Thursday that Indian pilots are the best in the world. He also warned that he would take legal action against the media house that published the report.
Randhawa said the AAIB probe report on the plane crash, which killed 260 people, had not mentioned that the fuel control switches were turned off because of the pilot's mistake. He condemned the article and said media houses must refrain from giving their opinion on the matter.
"Nowhere in the report has it been mentioned that the fuel control switch was turned off due to the pilot's mistake. I condemn the article by the Wall Street Journal. They said it was the pilot's mistake. They have not read the report properly, and we will take action against them through FIP. We had issued a press statement yesterday that no channel, commentator, or president of any agency should give such an opinion that has no basis...Indian pilots are among the best in the world. I did not give my opinion to the Wall Street Journal, which had approached me as well, because I am against this American media. They are deliberately giving their own opinion, their own views from this report, while there is nothing like this in the report. So I very strongly condemn this report of the Wall Street Journal, and we will take action on it," he said.
The report, citing cockpit recording, claimed that the captain of the ill-fated flight had turned off the switches that controlled fuel flowing to the plane's engines. The Wall Street Journal report cited people familiar with US officials' early assessment of evidence uncovered in the investigation.
The recording suggested that the first officer, who was flying the Boeing aircraft, asked the more experienced captain why he moved the switches to the "cutoff" position, it said.
AAIB had also mentioned the conversation in the cockpit seconds before the crash. However, it refrained from concluding who said what.
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The two pilots involved were Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder, who had total flying experience of 15,638 hours and 3,403 hours, respectively.