Centre on Air India crash report: 'Too early to jump to any conclusion based on pilots' conversation'
PTC Web Desk: Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Saturday said the report on the June 12 Air India crash was preliminary, urging the public and media to avoid speculation until the final findings are published.
The initial investigation has revealed that just three seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad airport, the fuel supply to both engines of the Air India Boeing 787 was suddenly disrupted. According to the probe, the fuel control switches for both engines moved from "RUN" to "CUTOFF" almost simultaneously—within a second of each other.
Calling the investigation "technically complex and challenging," Naidu noted that the matter involves several technical aspects and stressed that drawing conclusions at this point would be premature.
The ill-fated flight was under the command of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, a 56-year-old veteran pilot with over 15,638 hours of flying experience. His co-pilot, Clive Kunder, aged 32, had logged 3,403 flight hours.
Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Muralidhar Mohol, also cautioned against interpreting the cockpit voice recordings too literally, stating that the pilot conversation was brief and inconclusive.
"The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) operates independently. The black box was not sent abroad—it was decoded domestically," Mohol said. "We cannot derive conclusions from the limited cockpit exchange alone," he added.
The London-bound Air India flight tragically crashed into the BJ Medical College hostel building in Ahmedabad shortly after take-off. The catastrophic accident claimed the lives of 260 persons, including 241 persons on board (passengers and crew) and 19 individuals on the ground.
- With inputs from agencies
