Air India Delhi-Bengaluru flight suffers tail strike while landing at Bengaluru Airport
Air India flight AI2651 was grounded after the incident. It had 179 people on board
A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Centre to publish the complete data retrieved from the crashed Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which went down on June 12, 2025, in Ahmedabad, killing 260 people.
The plea filed by the NGO, Safety Matters Foundation, has flagged certain issues with the preliminary report released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation over the air crash. It contends that the report has failed to disseminate all data obtained during the early stage of the air crash investigation, as it is required to do under Aircraft (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Rules, 2017.
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Additionally, the plea also alleged that the preliminary report further fails to incorporate or even acknowledge the testimony of the sole surviving passenger, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old businessman from Leicester, the United Kingdom.
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The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released its preliminary report on July 12 into the AI-171 crash involving the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, and it pointed to a disturbing sequence of events in the cockpit moments after takeoff.
The report suggested that fuel being cut off to both engines shortly after takeoff was the likely cause of the disaster. As per the report, the ill-fated Boeing 787-8’s fuel control switches transitioned from the ‘RUN’ to ‘CUTOFF’ position seconds after takeoff.
This led to the aircraft losing thrust. However, as per media reports, the fuel switches were found in the RUN position in the wreckage.
So, as per the preliminary report and media reports, one of the pilots allegedly first turned the switches from RUN to CUTOFF, and then, when the plane started losing thrust, they switched it from CUTOFF to RUN in the last few seconds before the crash.
As per the report, after turning the fuel switches back to RUN, engine one partially recovered, but engine two failed to recover. Ultimately, Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed when engines shut down. And then the deadly crash happened. As per experts, the fuel engine from ‘run’ to ‘cutoff’ cannot be done easily.
Manual force is required to push the switches from ‘run to cutoff’ or ‘cutoff to run’ – it cannot be done accidentally either.
The AAIB report revealed a brief conversation between the pilots indicating cockpit confusion. One of the pilots said, “Why did you switch off the fuel?” The other responded, “No, I did not”.
The report does not confirm who said what — it stops short of assigning fault.
The Federation of Indian Pilots (FPI) president and former Air India pilot Captain CS Randhawa told a news agency that the position of the fuel switches can be changed only with a human interface.
According to him, the switches are generally used in cases where there has been a flameout of both engines or the pilots have recycled the switches.
“It is not clear from the preliminary report as to why the position of the switches was changed”, he had said and added that there could also have been an interruption in the power supply.
“Now, in case of a dual engine flameout, the auto-throttle switches are turned off, and the fuel control switches are made to cut off and run. Basically, they reactivate,” he told a news agency.
The Civil Aviation Minister had urged in July that people should not jump to conclusions, and the final report is yet to come.
As per the latest development, the probe into the Air India crash is nearing completion, and the AAIB is expected to submit its final report by the end of this year, sources in the Civil Aviation Ministry told the media.
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