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New Delhi: A US aviation body has suggested that the fuel control switches of the ill-fated Air India plane that crashed last month killing all but one onboard were manually moved. The new head of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that it doesn't appear that a mechanical issue or inadvertent movement of the fuel control unit or switches of the aircraft led to the fatal crash.
"We can say with a high level of confidence is it doesn't appear to be a mechanical issue with the Boeing fuel control unit," Bryan Bedford, the FAA's administrator, said on Thursday. "We feel very comfortable that thisc of fuel control," he added
This came two days after Air India said that it found no issues with fuel control switches of all its aircraft. The airline conducted precautionary inspections on the locking mechanism of fuel control switch (FCS) on all Boeing 787 and Boeing 737 aircraft in its fleet after a preliminary probe report on the June 12 Air India plane crash indicated that the aircraft's fuel control switches were turned off seconds before the tragic accident.
The Ahmedabad-London Air India plane crashed on June 12, shortly after taking off from the airport, killing 241 out of 242 on board. According to Air Accident Investigation Bureau's (AAIB) preliminary probe report, the fuel control switches that regulate fuel flow to both engines of an aircraft were moved to the cutoff position from run, one after another within a 1-second time gap.
The cockpit voice recording also revealed that one of the pilots had asked the other why did he cutoff the fuel control switches. The other pilot said that he did not do so.
