Black boxes recovered from last month’s horrific Air India crash reveal that the captain handed control of the aircraft to his first officer before takeoff. The final conversation between the two pilots, recorded just moments before the disaster that claimed nearly 300 lives, has been uncovered – and six chilling words offer deeper insight into what may have gone wrong.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal said to First Officer Clive Kunder: “The plane is in your hands”, according to sources familiar with the recordings. The insiders explained to Corriere della Sera that it was common for the First Officer to manage the takeoff of a plane. Mr Kunder would have had his “hands full” flying the plane, US pilots familiar with the preliminary report into the crash said. The documents show that before the fatal event, two fuel switches were changed from “Run” to “Cutoff”, which stopped fuel supply to the engines.
According to sources at Corriere, the First Officer was heard asking the Captain: “Why did you shut off the engines?”
Shortly after, another recording heard the senior pilot respond with: “I didn’t do it.” However, the news outlet reports that Mr Kunder was “unconviced” by his response, repeating the question “several more times” in six seconds.
The plane took off and remained airborne for about 30 seconds before losing power, crashing down into a nearby residential area. The disaster killed all but one person on board, and a further 19 people on the ground.
A Reuters source briefed on US officials’ early assessment of the event also claims that Mr Kunder had asked the captain why he had moved the fuel switches into the “Cutoff” position.
Mr Sabharwal is said to have stayed eerily calm as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner lost height, while the co-pilot responsible for the takeoff panicked.
The preliminary report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), published last week, acknowledged that the switches were flipped but did not say who made the move or whether it was deliberate.
Captain Steve Scheibner, a seasoned pilot and aviation expert, believes that the deadly crash was the result of human action within the cockpit. Insisting that the aircraft itself was not to blame, he suggested that there was a “human hand” behind the accident.
He told Piers Morgan Uncensored: “I really firmly believe that there had to be a human hand on both of those for them to go to cut off.”
India’s aviation minister is urging people to jump to conclusions as to whether the change was deliberate or accidental, with a final report expected next year.