The families of four victims who died in an Air India crash earlier this year are blaming faulty fuel switches for the incident that killed 260 people.
In the first lawsuit filed in the U.S. over the crash, the families are accusing plane maker Boeing and Honeywell, which made the switches, of being responsible.
Air India Flight 171 took off on June 12 for London from the Indian city of Ahmedabad in a Boeing 787. Just seconds later, both engine fuel cutoff switches moved from run to cutoff, causing dual-engine flameout, according to the crash’s preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).
The plaintiffs, in a complaint filed Tuesday in Delaware Superior Court, point to a 2018 Federal Aviation Administration advisory that recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, inspect the fuel cutoff switches’ locking mechanism to ensure it could not be accidentally moved.
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“The FAA issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) No. NM-18-33 on December 17, 2018, regarding the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature,” the preliminary report states.
AAIB’s preliminary report stated that Air India had not conducted the suggested inspections, and that maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash.
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The report noted that “all applicable airworthiness directives and alert service bulletins were complied with on the aircraft as well as engines.”
The lawsuit maintains that the switches are in a place in the cockpit where they were more likely to be inadvertently pushed, which “effectively guaranteed that normal cockpit activity could result in inadvertent fuel cutoff.”
However, aviation safety experts told Reuters that they could not be accidentally flipped based on their location and design.
The AAIB’s report mentioned a cockpit voice recording where one pilot asked the other why he cut off the fuel and “the other pilot responded that he did not do so.”
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BA | THE BOEING CO. | 214.81 | +0.21 | +0.10% |
| HON | HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC. | 212.03 | +0.35 | +0.17% |
Boeing referred FOX Business to the report, but did not provide any additional comment.
Honeywell did not immediately respond to a FOX Business inquiry.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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