By Allison Lampert and Aditya Kalra
(Reuters) -A preliminary report in the crash of Air India in which 260 people killed last month, three seconds after taking off, the switches of the Fuel Cutoff switches aircraft engines showed the engines of fuel thoroughly from run to cut.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner immediately started to lose and sink, according to the report released on Saturday by researchers from Indian Aviation Accident.
One pilot can be heard on the cockpit voting recorder in which the other is asked why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot replied that he did not do this,” said the report.
It did not identify what comments were made by the captain of the flight and who transferred “Mayday, Mayday” by the first officer, nor which pilot, just before the crash.
At the crash location, both fuel switches were found in the run position and the report said there had been indications that there were both engines that had returned before the low height crash.
Both pilots were experienced jet pilots with around 19,000 total flying hours between them, including more than 9,000 out of 787.
The provisional report also does not say how the switch to the Cutoff position could have been reversed on the London flight of 12 June from the Indian city of Ahmedabad.
The American aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said that an important question is why the switches have been moved in a way in a way that is not consistent with normal operations.
“Did they only led or have they moved because of the pilots?” he asked. “And if they have been moved because of a pilot, why?”
The American aviation safety expert John Cox said that a pilot could not accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. “You can't bump them and move them,” he said.
Cut to close, the engines cuts almost immediately. It is usually used to switch off engines as soon as an airplane has arrived at the airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as a motorcycle fire. The report does not indicate that there was an emergency for which the engine was needed.
“In this phase of research, there are no recommended actions for Boeing 787-8 and/or GENX-1B motor operators and manufacturers,” said the India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
Air India, Boeing and Ge Aerospace did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The office, an office under the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation, leads the probe in a decade in the deadliest aviation accident in the world.
The two black boxes of the plane, both combined cockpit recorders and flight data recorders, were restored in the days after the crash and later downloaded in India.
Black boxes offer crucial data such as height, air speed and final pilot conversations that help reduce possible causes of the crash.
Most air accidents are caused by several factors, with a provisional report 30 days after the accident according to the international rules, and a final report that is expected within a year.
Air India has been intensively examined since the crash.
The Aviation Safety Agency of the European Union said it is planning to investigate its budget airline, Air India Express, after Reuters reported that the carrier did not follow a directive to change the engine parts of an Airbus A320 in time and forgotten data to show compliance.
The aviation watchdog of India has also warned Air India about the violation of rules for flying three Airbus aircraft with overdue checks on escape dria and warned in June for “serious violations” of Times for pilot obligation.
The US National Transportation Safety Board refused to comment on the release of the report.
NTSB -President Jennifer Homendy had previously urged the Indian government to be transparent in the interest of aviation safety.
(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru and Aditya Kalra and Abhijith Ganapavaram in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, David Shepardson in Washington and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago;
