It looks as though someone pulled out and then threw the fuel cutoff switches for both engines of the Boeing 787 that was operating as Air India 171. Airways offers a timeline.
The Air Current has a clear and annotated picture of the switches:
It is tough to understand how this could have been a mistake. After being pulled out to release the lock the switches had to be moved down/back to the cutoff position. During climb out, on the other hand, the appropriate levers are generally being moved up (gear and flap levers, for example).
Some interesting items from the Air Currents article:
Time to let SuperGrok 4.0 do all of the flying?
Could the pilots have experienced an engine malfunction, (affecting only one engine) and trying to power down the bad engine made a mistake (wrong engine) that left them without time to reverse it?
Anon: If a turbojet engine fails on a twin-engine airliner there is nothing that pilots need to do until they reach a safe altitude, e.g., 2500′ above the ground, other than fly the plane (on less advanced aircraft, such as the CRJ that I used to fly it would be necessary to use rudder and aileron to straighten out the airplane against the asymmetric thrust). Even if an engine is on fire, the memory item may be to do nothing other than pull back a thrust lever and wait for 30 seconds to see what happens. Depending on the plane, it might be also be a memory item to move the thrust lever all the way back into a “cutoff” detent (equivalent to throwing the fuel shutoff switch on the B787, I guess). If the fire persists there is a disconnection switch that isolates an engine from fuel, hydraulics, bleed air, and electrical (i.e., goes far beyond mere fuel shutoff). If the fire persists after that there are extinguisher bottles that can be fired into the somehow-burning-without-fuel engine.
(If there had been a bunch of warnings raised to the pilots about one or both engines we would probably already know about that because it would have been in the flight data recorder.)
*turbofan in this case philg
(although I’m sure the same applies )
Ryan: the FAA still calls the whole class “turbojet”. See FAR 91.219 for example. “ 91.219 Altitude alerting system or device: Turbojet-powered civil airplanes.” (Of course there are almost no pure turbojets being operated anymore.)
philg – ah sorry my bad then!
An additional question, is it necessary to power down an engine if it fails?
Anon: No. In a propeller-driven airplane it is necessary to feather the prop after an engine quits. This turns the prop blades so that they are like knife edges into the wind. This is done automatically on a lot of bigger and more expensive turboprops (“auto-feather”). But a dead turbojet engine just spins and doesn’t cause a lot of drag and, in any case, the pilots have no control over the angles of the blades inside the fans.
Boeing had manufacturing defect
Anon: Based on what we know now I think at most we could argue that Boeing had an engineering design defect. In retrospect, perhaps the following code would have been wiser to install: If there are no cautions or warnings being raised by the airplane AND the airplane is in flight THEN demand confirmation before doing anything in response to these switches being thrown.
@Philip, requiring a confirmation in an emergency situation might be too restrictive. I believe a better design would be to place a protective cap over the switch. To shut down the engine, the user would lift the cap and then flip the switch. This is a two-step process, but in my opinion, it is much better than a confirmation prompt.
The cap would help prevent accidental activation. Even better, if the cap is connected to a sensor that logs to the black box, you gain an additional data point to help determine what actually happened.
I read more about the cutoff switch, it is not like a standard light switch. To move it to either the ON or OFF position, you must first pull the switch outward. Only then can it be toggled. This is due to a spring-loaded locking mechanism designed to prevent accidental activation. It requires an intentional action to operate, which is a sound design choice.
Adding a protective cap, as I suggested earlier, would provide an extra layer of safety, both physically and as a form of human confirmation, before making any change.
See this: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/airlines-/-aviation/i-didnt-do-it-air-india-crash-report-shows-pilot-confusion-over-engine-switch-movement/articleshow/122398181.cms?from=mdr
its being misrepresented in the western media for some reason to put the blame on the pilots.
They had combined experience of 15k & ~3.5k hours respectively.
I know ya-all hate Indians for H1B. But please don’t put blame on the blameless. They are anyways not alive anymore to defend themselves.
@Anonymous, you are questioning why the West is blaming the pilot(s), yet your own top comment on July 11, 2025 at 11:06 pm states:
> Boeing had manufacturing defect
So, it is OK for *you* to blame Boeing, but it is not OK for the West to blame the pilot?
@Anonymous, watch this video in full. Based on the data available so far, there is very strong evidence suggesting this was intentional.
The stabiliser controls just along from the fuel cut-offs in the OP picture are capped (red). Possibly the cut-offs have a different interlock design to avoid accidental confusion. But even that can be ineffective when ingrained operations are being carried out autonomously. The operator’s brain says ‘adjust Y’, the hands accidentally find control Z that works differently, but muscle memory automatically operates control Z’s UI instead of raising an exception to the conscious mind.
The information released so far doesn’t definitively show that someone “intentionally” cut off the fuel: only that the switches, that must have been in RUN for the aircraft to be in the air were later described to be in OFF, and, from the data recorded, that the “transition” applied within 1s. Taking pilot A’s question why pilot B set the switches OFF at face value, pilot A must have either observed pilot B doing so, or observed their OFF position, or seen a tell-tale, if there is one, on the instrument panel/display. Or pilot A might have operated the switches and then asked the question to cover himself. The investigation team has a year to find out.
> Notably, a 2018 FAA bulletin (SAIB NM-18-33) warned of disengaged fuel control switch locking mechanisms, though it was not deemed an airworthiness directive.
Roundabout way of saying the yahoos at Boeing (or the yahoo contractor they hired) installed these critical switches without the lock engaged:
> The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel
control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or
engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to
supply or cutoff fuel to the engines. The fuel control switch has a locking feature to prevent
inadvertent operation that could result in unintended switch movement between the fuel supply and
fuel cutoff positions…. Boeing informed the FAA that the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar
on various Boeing airplane models.
Pilot quotes from Airways support an accidental engagement hypothesis:
> Cockpit voice recordings capture one pilot asking, “Why did you cut off?” with the other replying, “I didn’t.”
The evidence against is that it seems a lot less likely to accidentally engage two switches than one. Maybe someone was resting their phone or granola bar on them.
Doesn’t it seem strange that a human would be able to lift the lock mechanisms and move two switches in basically one second? It took them four seconds to bring them back on, which seems more believable of human speeds when trying to do it quickly.
Philip,
Could you comment on pilot seats? In this photo seat is covered with something furry, and it seems it’s quite common on airplanes. It seems like standard equipment since pilot is flying whatever plane he assigned for the next flight. Presumably pilot seats are designed to be very comfortable for long seating. If so, why don’t we see this type of cover on the office seats, passenger seats, etc?
As 1 who has worked in H1B sweat shops, it was a definite H1B move. Even if they were in disrepair, only 1 switch should have glitched.
Remember Yeti flight 691, where the pilot mistakenly pulled the condition (fuel flow) lever instead of the flaps lever, right before landing? Maybe same kind of mistake here, if we are being charitable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti_Airlines_Flight_691
The following, needs further clarity:
> 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 fuel and triggering total power loss. Switching to “cut-off” is a move typically done only after landing.
Does the black box record the “off” position ONLY when the switch is physically moved to that position? Or could the system also register “off” due to a malfunction such as a software bug, hardware failure, or wiring issue?
If the answer is that the black box records “off” only when the switch is physically moved to that position, then we have our answer. This can further be confirmed by examining the actual switch position from the wreckage, assuming the switch itself survived the crash.
I believe I’ve found an answer to my own question, based on the cockpit voice recording:
> In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he hit the cutoff switch. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report stated.
This clearly suggests that one of the pilots observed the switch in the OFF position. Could the switch have moved on its own? I find that extremely unlikely.
The cutoff switch has a locking mechanism, you must pull it outward before it can be toggled. It is designed specifically to prevent accidental or unintended activation. If the locking mechanism had failed, on both switches, it is certain the pilot would have noticed during pre-flight checks and aborted the flight.
Therefore, my conclusion is this: one of the pilots intentionally moved the cutoff switch to the OFF position, and did so early in the flight while the plane was still close to the ground, to prevent the other pilot from reversing the action and regaining control.
I ave read some places that there was someone in the jump seat. If true, is it possible the third person flipped or kicked the switches?
I do not know anything but observe that in the illustration provided here, the flap levers are adjacent to the protected cut-off switches. Flaps would be full on for takeoff, so that there would be little space on the right hand side in the vicinity of the critical switches. What this might mean, if anything, I don’t know!
They are apparently adding more “flight psychologists” to the accident team. If you wanted to intentionally bring down the airplane, your timing would probably look like this for best results. What could have possessed one of the pilots to do this? (Apparently the audio has one of the pilots asking the second pilot if he did it, and the second pilot denying it)