The Aircraft Accident investigation Bureau in India is focusing on engine thrust.

Investigators have discovered in the preliminary investigation into the Air India Flight 171 crash which killed 260 people on 12^th June 2025. Just seconds after take-off both of the 12-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s fuel-control switches abruptly moved to the “cut -off” position, starving the engines of vital fuel and triggering total power loss. Switching to “Cut-off” is a move typically done only after landing.

The Cockpit voice recording captures one pilot asking the other why he “did the cut-off”, to which the other pilot replies that he didn’t. The recording does not clarify who said what. At the time of take-off, the co-pilot was flying the aircraft while the captain was monitoring. The switches were returned to their normal inflight position, triggering automatic engine relight. At the time of the crash, one engine was regaining thurst while the other had relit but had not yet recovered power.

Air India Flight 171 was airborne for less than 50 seconds in, according to the FlightRadar24 website.

Air India pilots have conducted simulation of the ill-fated Air India Boeing 787 AI-171 Dreamliner’s conditions in a simulator, testing scenarios with extended landing gear and retracted wing flaps, coupled with the earlier detection of an emergency-power turbine activation moments before impact killing 259 on board with one survivor and 11 at the hostel crash site in Ahmedabad on June 12 just 30 seconds after take-off. The black box data from the crash has been successfully downloaded and is being analysed at the Aircraft Accident investigation Bureau lab in India. Officials from Boeing, GE Aerospace, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have arrived in India to assist, although the investigation remains under Indian control.

Investigators say the lever-lock fuel switches are designed to prevent accidental activation- they must be pulled up to unlock before flipping, a critical safety feature dating back to the 1950s. Built to exacting standards, they are highly reliable. Protective guard brackets further shield them from accidental bumps.

In many cockpit emergencies, pilots may press the wrong buttons to make incorrect selections= but there was no indication of such a situation here, nor any discussion suggesting that the fuel switches were selected by mistake. This kind of error doesn’t typically happen without some evident issue. The voice recorder will reveal more was the flying pilot trying to restart the engines, or the monitoring one?”

Before boarding Flight 171, both pilots and crew had passed breathalyser tests, and had been cleared fit to fly, the report says. The Pilots, based in Mumbai, had arrived in Ahmedabad the day before the flight and had adequate rest.

In December 2019, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) highlighting that some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged.  The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 aircraft, including Air India’s VT-ANB which crashed. As the SAIB was advisory, Air India did not perform the recommended inspections. It is also said that the aircraft’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT) had deployed – a clear sign of a major systems failure- and the landing gear was found in “down position” or not retracted. The RAT, a small propeller that extends from the underside of the Boeing 787 Dreamline, acts as an emergency backup generator. It automatically deploys in flight when both engines lose power or if all three hydraulic systems register critically low pressure, supplying limited power to keep essential flight systems operational. “The deployment of the RAM air Turbine (RAT) strongly supports the conclusion that both engines had failed.

According to a commercial pilot “When both engines fail and the aircraft starts going down, the reaction goes beyond just being startled – you go numb. In that moment, landing gear isn’t your focus. Your mind is on one thing: the flight path. Where can I put this aircraft down safely? And in this case, there simply wasn’t enough altitude to work with. The engines were switched off and then back on. The pilots realised the engines were losing thrust – likely restarting the left one first, followed by the right. But the right engine didn’t have enough time to spool back up, and the thrust was in sufficient. Both were eventually set to “run”, but with the left shut down first and the right too late to recover, it was simply too little, too late.”.

“It would be impossible to pull both switches with a single movement of one hand, and this makes accidental deployment unlikely”, according to an air accident investigator.

Air India chairman  N Chandrasekaran said “one of the engines of the Air India plane that crashed last week was new, while the other was not due for servicing until December 2025 and both engines of the aircraft had clear histories. The right engine was a new engine put in March 2025, the left engine was last serviced in 2023”.

The Genx-1B engines made by GE Aerospace, don’t follow a fixed overhaul or maintenance schedule, as they are equipped with a system called the Full Authority Digital Engine Control or FADEC that continuously monitors engine health and performance, and the decision to service or replace the engine is based on this data and physical and visual inspections. However certain components of the engine known as Life Limited Parts (LLPs) still have a fixed lifespan typically between 15, 000 and 20, 000 cycles.

Air India has announced a 15 per cent cut in to international operations on wide-body aircraft until mid-July as it grapples with the fallout from the crash and awaiting results of the investigation.

India’s aviation regulator had ordered additional safety checks on Air India’s Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 aircrafts, as a preventive measure, all of which had been cleared for service.  

Historically Boeing and GE have had numerous issues with 787 planes, and their reasons to prosecute whistle blowers in Boeing and find reasons to blame airline maintenance and the pilots.

A preliminary report into the deadly Air India jetline crash is to be expected to be released by Friday, according to a source the probe had narrowed its focus to the movement of the plane’s fuel control switches, that help power the plane’s two engines. not raising any immediate concerns over mechanical failure. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau who is leading the probe under international rules, have available information on the black boxes could not rule in or out improper, inadvertent or intentional actions that preceded or followed the apparent loss of thrust before the aircraft crashed.

Air India which used to owned by Tatas was nationalised by Indian government as India’s national carrier was bought from the Indian government in 2022.

However, Boeing had suffered from a series of quality control issues often highlighted by whistleblowers who have raised concerns about production standards. Some have even claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service- allegations that the company has consistently denied.

In December 2009, amid rising oil prices, a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle, accelerated into a cloudy sky as a cheering crowd looked on, culminating billions of dollars of investment and years of development. At the time Boeing’s arch rival, the European giant Airbus was taking an opposite approach, by developing A 380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world’s biggest and busiest airport, only for the fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021 after only 251 had been built.

But 787 was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight, with advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag, using efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, which replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

According to Boeing it would make it 20 per cent more efficient  than its predecessor, the Boeing 767, and significantly quieter, with a noise footprint  that the manufacturer said was up to 60 per cent smaller.

In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport. A week later overheating batteries  forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an international flight in Japan. The design was grounded worldwide for several minds, while Boeing came up with a solution. Boeing’s decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands, to take advantage of the region’s low rates of union membership. In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. Deliveries were heavily disrupted and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year. Allegations from Boeing’s own current and former employees including late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory, in South Carolina, who claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety. The workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line. He also said that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks, screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring. His claims had previously passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating it concluded that at least 53 “non-conforming” parts had gone missing in the factory. An audit confirmed by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not “present a safety of flight issue” though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later confirmed it had “fully resolved the FAA’s findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”.

However, Mr. Bennett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. “I believe it’s just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787. I Pray that I am wrong”. He said in 2019.

In 2024, Mr. Bennett took his own life, when he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistle blower lawsuit against the company- which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations Boeing denied this.

Cynthia Kitchens, another former quality manager at the Boeing plant had also echoed his previous claims, as in 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins an fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving fast and deliberately installing defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings on the plane- creating a risk of dangerous potential short-circuits. Boeing said Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan”.  It says she subsequently filed lawsuit against Boeing, “alleging claims for discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because “the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial plane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives”.

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, “had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets.” Boeing however, insists that “claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate”. “The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis had validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life cover several decades and these issues do not present any safety concerns.”

Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards amid two accidents involving their bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overhaul its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

Has 787 already been compromised by past failures, creating ongoing safety risks.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes, which had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality prior to the Air India Ahmedabad crash. During that period Boeing had carried more than a billion passengers safely, with over 1, 100 planes in service worldwide.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered the country’s airlines to inspect fuel control switches in Boeing aeroplanes, after their reported involvement in a fatal Air India crash that killed 260 people in June. The order follows Indian and International airlines already starting to carry out their own checks, after the US Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday that the fuel control switches in Boeing aeroplanes are safe. The safety of the switches has been a critical point of concern after a preliminary report on the disaster that found fuel to the engines of the plane involved  cut off moments after take-off.