Air India Pilot's last words to first officer before fatal crash

The captain of Air India Flight 171, which crashed in Ahmedabad killing 241 people on board last month, entrusted his first officer with the plane before takeoff, sources have claimed, citing the black boxes recovered from the crash. 'The plane is in your hands,' Captain Sumeet Sabharwal (pictured) allegedly told First Officer Clive Kunder, two Western sources familiar with the contents of the recordings told Corriere della Sera.

The sources said it was not unusual for the captain of a flight to yield the controls to a first officer during takeoff. But pilots familiar with the preliminary report into the crash assessed that Mr Kunder (pictured) would have 'had his hands full' flying the plane at the time. The plane left the ground at 1:38:39pm and remained airborne for about 30 seconds before losing power and coming down in a residential area, killing 19 people on the ground and all but one person on board.

Before the crash, Mr Kunder asked the captain why he had moved the fuel switches into a position that starved the engines of fuel, a source briefed on U.S. officials' early assessment of evidence told Reuters. A full transcript has not been released and the matter is still under investigation. India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is leading the investigation into the crash, but others have reviewed the flight recorder's contents. Corriere's sources said Mr Kunder was heard asking the senior pilot: 'Why did you shut off the engines?' Another microphone recorded a 'vague' denial: 'I didn't do it'. The outlet reports that Mr Kunder was 'unconvinced' and asked the same question 'several more times' over a further six seconds. Reuters' source assessed that the cockpit recording of dialogue supported the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane's engines.

A preliminary report released by India's AAIB on Saturday confirmed that the fuel switches had switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' just after takeoff -- but did not say how they were moved, nor speculate whether it was deliberate or accidental. The report did not find any mechanical or maintenance faults on the flight. It did say that one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel and 'the other pilot responded that he did not do so.' Investigators did not identify which remarks were made by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and which by First Officer Clive Kunder, who had total flying experience of 15,638 hours and 3,403 hours, respectively.

There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence from the conversation points to the captain, according to the early assessment by U.S. officials. Citing U.S. pilots familiar with the AAIB report, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that 'as the pilot actively flying, [First Officer] Kunder likely would have had his hands full pulling back on the Dreamliner's controls at that stage of the flight'. 'Sabharwal, as the pilot monitoring, would have been more likely to have had his hands free as he oversaw the operation.'

According to the report, the switches were apparently moved in succession, one second apart, before both were turned back on about 10 seconds later. The movement of the fuel control switches allows and cuts fuel flow to the plane's engines. The report did not say how the switches could have flipped to the cutoff position during the flight. The switches' 'locking feature' meant pilots had to lift them up before changing their position - they are not simple push buttons that can be accidentally turned off. Almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground, closed-circuit TV footage showed a backup energy source called a ram air turbine (RAT) had deployed, indicating a loss of power from the engines. The London-bound plane began to lose thrust, and after reaching a height of 650 feet, the jet started to sink. The fuel switches for both engines were indeed turned back to 'run', and the airplane automatically tried restarting the engines, the report said. But the plane could not gain power quickly enough to stop its descent. The report stated: 'One of the pilots transmitted "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY"'.

The plane clipped some trees and a chimney before crashing in a fireball into a building on a nearby medical college campus, the report said, killing 19 people on the ground and 241 of the 242 on board. Both fuel switches were found in the run position at the crash site. Aviation expert and former airline pilot Terry Tozer said the engine cutoff switches being switched to off only seconds after takeoff was 'absolutely bizarre.' 'Unfortunately, the altitude was so low that the engines were only beginning to recover and they didn´t have enough time,' he told Sky News. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said in an internal memo on Monday that the preliminary report into the crash found no mechanical or maintenance faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out. Wilson also urged the airline's staff to avoid drawing premature conclusions about the crash.

India's civil aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, echoed that the report´s findings were preliminary and one should not 'jump into any conclusions on this.' 'Let us wait for the final report,' Naidu told reporters. Investigators are said to be looking at the medical records of the pilots as part of their probe. Captain Mohan Ranganathan, a leading aviation safety expert in India, claimed that one of the pilots had suffered with their mental health, citing other Air India pilots.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph , he claimed: 'He had taken time off from flying in the last three to four years. He had taken medical leave for that.' Captain Sabharwal is also understood to have taken bereavement leave after the death of his mother, though Mr Ranganathan understands that he had been 'medically cleared' by Air India prior to the fatal crash last month. Air India, in a statement, said it is fully cooperating with authorities investigating the crash. A final report is expected within a year. The AAIB's preliminary report had no safety recommendations for Boeing or engine manufacturer GE.

The AAIB, which is leading the investigation, said in a statement on Thursday that 'certain sections of the international media are repeatedly attempting to draw conclusions through selective and unverified reporting.' It added the investigation was ongoing and it remained too early to draw definitive conclusions. Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, and under international rules, a final report is expected within a year of an accident. The plane´s black boxes - combined cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders - were recovered in the days following the crash and later downloaded in India. Indian authorities had also ordered deeper checks of Air India´s entire Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet to prevent future incidents. Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.