Air India crash: How a US safety group is looking to shift focus from pilots to aircraft’s ‘history’ of defects

The FAS is led by Ed Pierson, a former Boeing employee who turned whistleblower.

With its latest submission, the FAS has joined some pilot associations, a few aviation safety experts, and lawyers representing the victims’ kin who believe that the probe appears to be heavily focused on the pilots’ actions, while largely overlooking possibilities of technical issues with the plane.

Campaign group’s claims on doomed aircraft, other Boeing 787 jets

In a presentation to the PSI, the campaign group claimed that non-public documents in its possession reveal that the aircraft in question—VT-ANB—suffered various electrical systems failures, starting from its initial days and through its operational life of 11 years. The said documents were not available with the presentation, and could not be independently verified.

“Documents indicate systems failures started the very first day the airplane arrived in India (Feb 1, 2014). Documents further reveal VT-ANB experienced a wide & confusing variety of engineering, manufacturing, quality, and maintenance problems throughout its 11-year life, leading to electrical systems failures to include circuit breakers repeatedly tripping, electronics/avionics/software faults, wire damage, smoke & fumes, short circuits, loss of electrical current, electrical surges, burning, and overheating of power distribution components including a very serious fire,” the FAS presentation claimed.

The presentation said that in January 2022, a fire in the aircraft’s P100 Primary Power Panel led to such extensive damage to the panel that it had to be replaced entirely. The panel is one of five units responsible for receiving high-voltage power from the aircraft’s left engine and routing it to various systems on the aircraft. To be sure, redundancies are built in and this panel works in conjunction with other units, allowing the aircraft to maintain power even if the panel fails.

The FAS went on to claim that other Boeing 787 aircraft—Air India’s as well as various jets registered in the US, Canada, and Australia—have been facing aircraft system failures similar to VT-ANB.

“Boeing’s 787 airplane program was more than 3 years behind schedule, costing billions of dollars. FAS analyzed >2,000 aircraft systems failure reports on 787 model airplanes. These reports cover a small fraction (18%) of the global 787 fleet of 1,235 airplanes. Therefore, we are looking at just the tip of the iceberg,” FAS said in the presentation.

The campaign group also suggested that “latent defects” could be a cause of the accident and remain a concern. A latent defect is a “hidden flaw in an aircraft’s design, manufacturing, or maintenance that can remain undetected for years until triggered, potentially causing sudden cascading failures and a catastrophe,” it said.

In response to a request for comment on the FAS’s claims, Boeing said, “We will defer to India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), in adherence with the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization protocol known as Annex 13.” Air India did not comment on the matter, and request for comments mailed to the AAIB Director General did not elicit a response.

The group’s demands, its criticism of AAIB preliminary probe report

In its presentation, the FAS urged the PSI and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the provided information “in light of Federal Criminal Statutes”. “Law enforcement must investigate this criminal cover-up and the ties and similarities to the two Boeing MAX airplane crashes…otherwise it will happen again,” it said.

It also recommended that the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) should ensure full disclosure of all relevant information with the AAIB-led investigation team, and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—the American aviation regulator—should thoroughly investigate all Boeing 787 aircraft systems failure reports and conduct inspections on all aircraft of the type. The NTSB and the FAA are key authorities when it comes to Boeing aircraft as the aircraft manufacturer is American.

According to the FAS, the AAIB’s preliminary report in the AI 171 crash investigation “clearly insinuates that one of the pilots was at fault for cutting off the fuel control switches”, alleging that the report appeared to blame the pilots. It also alleged that this was similar to the initial narrative when two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed a few years ago within a few months of one another. Investigations had revealed that a key cause of the crashes was a problem with a new system introduced by Boeing on the aircraft without adequately informing airlines and pilots, and not pilot action or error as initially suspected.

The AAIB’s preliminary investigation report, released a month after the accident, said that the Air India Boeing 787-8 aircraft crashed after both its engines were starved of fuel as the two fuel control switches transitioned from ‘RUN’ to ‘CUTOFF’ position within a second of each other moments after lift-off. From the cockpit voice recorder data, the preliminary probe report notes that one of the pilots asked the other why he cut off the fuel, to which the other pilot responded saying he did not.

To be sure, the report didn’t mention that fuel control switches—which allow and cut fuel flow to the plane’s engines—moved physically, and used the term “transitioned” to describe the change of mode from RUN to CUTOFF. It also didn’t state these were moved by either of the pilots. However, the selective information presented in the report had many believing that it implicitly pointed a finger at the flight crew, particularly Sumeet Sabharwal, a highly experienced pilot. Pilot suicide theories also started doing rounds, even as the probe is still underway and the government has assured that all aspects and possible causes will be thoroughly examined.

Pilot bodies, including the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), have raised strong objections to the preliminary report, so have some aviation experts. The FIP and Sumeet Sabharwal’s father Pushkar Raj Sabharwal also filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the fairness of the AAIB probe, apart from demanding that the government should initiate a judicial investigation into the crash, instead of relying on the AAIB probe. Some aviation safety experts have said that the possibility of catastrophic system failures should be investigated thoroughly.