Air India crash: Did ‘electric fire’ in tail cause the deadly crash?

It’s been nearly 40 days since Air India AI-171 flight crashed 26 seconds after it took off from runway 23 of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad in India’s western state of Gujarat. Investigators from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) are still trying to ascertain what caused the Boeing aircraft to crash, killing 260 people.

Amid the AAIB’s preliminary report indicating that the fuel switches were in the ‘cutoff’ position, resulting in fuel being cut off to both engines shortly after take-off, investigators are now looking at the tail of the crashed airplane, hoping to find some clues there.

Here’s what we know so far.

An answer in the tail?

Officials are now looking at the wreckage of flight AI-171, especially focusing on the empennage, or tail assembly. The development comes after the aircraft showed signs of a “contained electric fire” but restricted to only a few components located in the rear.

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Remarkably, the tail, which had disengaged during the crash, remained mostly intact and escaped the explosion and fuel fire that charred the rest of the aircraft.

Officials revealed that the tail — now stored safely in Ahmedabad — could hold the key to understanding a potential malfunction in the aircraft’s electrical supply during take-off. “They hold the key for a detailed analysis of a possible malfunction in the electric supply of the aircraft during lift off,” an official told The Indian Express.

Officials note that an electric fire could have occurred owing based on the condition of the aft Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorder or the rear black box from the rooftop of the BJ Medical College hostel mess building on June 13. The rear black box had suffered extensive internal thermal damage.

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Officials noted that the tail absorbed the expected crash force on impact with the hostel building, but not to an extent that would normally destroy the black box beyond recovery. “It needs to be probed if the electric fire in the tail was due to a fault that originated in one of the flight components when it began rolling for take-off, or was it purely a fire following the impact… The fire was contained in the tail section, which, despite being embedded in Building A (hostel mess), did not spread to the structure or its electrical framework,” The Indian Express quoted the official as saying.

Besides the rear black box, other components in the plane’s tail such as the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), transducers, and rudders are also under scrutiny. The APU was found intact and has been retrieved for further examination.

According to authorities, investigating the tail wreckage has become even more significant since the crew of the previous flight AI-423 from Delhi to Ahmedabad had logged an issue with the Stabilizer Position Transducer, which is also located in the empennage. However, engineers had cleared this issue before AI-171 took off.

Investigators further note that survivor Viswashkumar Ramesh’s account of “flickering cabin lights” also lends weight to the electrical fault theory. They note that the aircraft’s power systems could have rapidly switched between the main supply, backup generator, and attempted re-ignition — all within seconds.

What does the AAIB report reveal so far?

The preliminary report, which emerged on July 12, revealed that just seconds after take-off, both fuel-control switches in the Air India plane moved to the “cutoff” position. This starved the engines of fuel, and they began to lose power. The report says: “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other: why did he cut off? The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

It did not identify who said what.

The report also revealed that CCTV footage obtained from the airport showed a ram air turbine (RAT) being deployed during the initial climb immediately after take-off. This acts as a backup power source during emergencies, and is normally only deployed during complete power failure.

What next?

Following the report’s release, many media outlets, especially western news websites, indicated that the pilots of the ill-fated Air India flight had a role to play in the crash, prompting India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu to say, “Let’s not jump to any conclusions at this stage.”

The reportage of the findings also led the Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA) to issue a statement, saying the crew “acted in line with their training and responsibilities under challenging conditions and the pilots shouldn’t be vilified based on conjecture”.

“To casually suggest pilot suicide without verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting and a disservice to the dignity of the profession,” it added.

Days later, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) issued a legal notice against The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, demanding apologies and retractions for what it calls “baseless” and “defamatory” coverage surrounding the crash of Air India Flight AI 171.

Additionally, chair of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Jennifer Homendy, last Friday said it is too early to draw conclusions in the investigation into the deadly June 12 crash of Air India Flight 171. Homendy called the media reports on the Air India crash “premature and speculative”.

On Sunday, the AAIB also roped in veteran pilot and Air India’s former director of operations, Captain RS Sandhu into the probe. “AAIB has onboarded seasoned aviator RS Sandhu in the ongoing investigation of the Air India Boeing 787-8 plane crash in Ahmedabad last month,” PTI news agency quoted a source.

Captain Sandhu was also a designated examiner for the Boeing 787-8 fleet at Air India.

Notably, his inclusion comes when various pilot unions, including the Airline Pilots’ Association of India (ALPA India), had called for technical expertise in the probe. In fact, ALPA India had said that the AAIB needed to involve a pilot representative in the investigation.

With inputs from agencies