No Fault Found in Fuel Switch Lock of the Crashed AI-171 Flight: Govt
New Delhi: Junior civil aviation minister Murlidhar Mohol told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (July 29) that no abnormality has been found in the fuel control switch-locking mechanism of the Air India AI-171 plane that crashed mere minutes after take-off in Ahmedabad on July 21, 2025, resulting in the death of over 260 people.
He said the switch was examined at the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) level in Seattle, Unites States, as part of continued checks by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The investigation reportedly found no abnormality in the structural integrity of the switch, Mohol claimed in reply to Congress MP Jebi Mather Hisham's query. He added that the inspection of the complete thrust control module at the OEM level was still ongoing.
Hisham had questioned the government on the delay in publishing the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which can purportedly be released as late as end-October this year after failing to meet its one-year deadline. She inquired whether pilot conduct was among the factors under scrutiny and whether a concrete public release date could be announced.
Apart from the 15-page preliminary report released a month after the accident, investigators have disclosed few substantive findings. A report on The Wire had essayed how the AAIB’s interim statement fell well short of what Annex 13 of the ICAO, the United Nations agency that sets global standards for air accident investigations, expects from a genuine “interim statement,” and investigation veterans say it fails both the letter and the spirit of the rules meant to protect public safety.
Mohol, defending the government against delay allegations, told the house that investigations into major accidents such as the fatal Boeing 787 Dreamliner crash cannot be restricted to a fixed deadline and are dependent on a number of variables. Evading the demand for a specific deadline, he said the report would be uploaded on the AAIB website once the investigation completes.
Mohol's comments come a day after the Supreme Court announced the postponement of an independent inquiry into the incident until AAIB's final report is published, even as petitioners provided proof regarding the "premature activation" of the emergency generator in the aircraft.
The sequence of the Ram Air Turbine’s (RAT) deployment provided by the pilots' federation, that is among the petitioners, starkly refutes preliminary findings by the AAIB, which point towards a manual switching-off of fuel control switches as opposed to technical or electrical malfunction.
The AAIB and the centre continue to maintain that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner did not have any persisting technical issues that were ignored, eventually leading to the crash, even as multiple reports have evidenced the its long history of malfunction and obfuscation of accountability.
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