India air authority warns against speculation on Air India crash cause

Foreign media blamed for ‘repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting’

India’s air accident authority has warned foreign media not to speculate about the causes of Air India’s fatal crash last month amid increased focus on the actions of the plane’s pilots.

The Air Accident Investigation Bureau said on Thursday that the accident, the country’s worst aviation disaster in almost three decades, had “drawn public attention and shock” but that this was “not the time to create public anxiety or angst” regarding the safety of the country’s aviation Industry. 

“It has come to our attention that certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting,” the AAIB said. “Such actions are irresponsible, especially while the investigation remains ongoing.” 

The unusual intervention has come after media reports have turned the focus on Sumeet Sabharwal, the captain of the flight, alleging that he turned off the aircraft’s fuel switches. 

A preliminary report into the accident, released over the weekend, said cockpit switches that control the flow of fuel to the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner’s engines were turned to the “cut-off” position shortly after take-off. The switches moved one after another within the space of one second, according to the report.

Speculation about what happened has focused on an exchange shortly after take-off between the two pilots picked up in the cockpit voice recording and reported by the AAIB on Saturday. 

The report did not specify which of the men was speaking and only paraphrased their conversation rather than quoting them directly, saying that one of the pilots was “heard asking the other why did he cutoff [sic]” and: “The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

Aviation experts have speculated that the plane’s co-pilot, Clive Kunder, asked the question. 

In India — where the accident is seen as a national tragedy — many commentators are refusing to accept that one of the pilots might have caused the crash either accidentally or deliberately. Indian pilot unions have also defended the crew, warning that they should not be “vilified based on conjecture”. 

Andrew Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy, a consultancy based in Geneva said it was understandable if the Indian accident authority was searching for “a systematic fault in the airframe” due to national sensitivities.

However, he added that the 787 had been “flying for 15 years faultlessly”. “Either they did cut [the fuel switch] out accidentally or it was cut out deliberately and [that was] denied by one of the two pilots — and that opens a discussion about suicide,” he added.

Global media attention has trained on the two pilots and a potential murder-suicide motive, amid heightened speculation over the mental health of deceased veteran captain Sabharwal, who had about 11,500 hours of flying experience.

Medical records for Sabharwal and his first officer Kunder, who flew the plane under the senior pilot’s supervision, were submitted as part of the investigation into the crash, which is standard for any such probe, said a person familiar with the matter.

The AAIB’s preliminary report did not come to a conclusion or make mention of any issues with the pilots. Air India chief executive Campbell Wilson on Monday said there were no signs of medical problems with either crew members.

Air India said it was continuing to co-operate with the AAIB and referred all enquiries to the authority. The airline’s conglomerate owner, Tata Group, declined to comment.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India news agency last month at Sabharwal’s funeral, his Air India colleague Kapil Kohal called the deceased 56-year-old, whose widower father was a former Indian aviation regulatory official, as a “soft-spoken” and “simple guy” with a sparse wardrobe.

Kohal, who knew Sabharwal for 35 years, said he was not a “group person” and was known by his nicknames “Sabby” and “sad sack”. A former colleague Shankar Chaudhary, said Sabharwal was a “happy go lucky” man with an “always smiling face”.

Kunder, 34, who lived with his elderly parents and sister in Mumbai and had more than 3,400 hours of experience, was described in a tribute by Air India as a “young aviator full of promise” with “quiet dedication, grace and passion for flying”.

This story originally appeared on Financial Times.