India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has released a preliminary report on the June 12 crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 aircraft in Ahmedabad, revealing both the engines shut down within seconds off take-off.

According to the AAIB, both engines of the ill-fated aircraft experienced a momentary recovery after an initial loss of thrust, but ultimately failed to stabilise.

The aircraft had reached a maximum speed of 180 knots indicated airspeed (IAS) at 08:08:42 UTC, just before both Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from “run” to “cutoff”. This effectively shut down both engines in-flight.

The report has also revealed that both engines of the aircraft were cut off within a second of each other, just after take-off. The Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after the other, with a gap of just one second, causing the engine N1 and N2 speeds to drop as fuel supply was lost.

Cockpit voice recordings captured one pilot asking the other why the engines were cut off, to which the second pilot responded that he had not done so, as per the report.

The report acknowledged that CCTV footage from the airport showed the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deploying during the aircraft’s initial climb, immediately after lift-off.

The aircraft began losing altitude before it could even cross the airport’s perimeter wall. No significant bird activity was noted near the flight path, ruling out bird hit as a possible cause at this stage, the probe report added.

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