Shocking revelations emerge about Air India Flight 171, which crashed in Ahmedabad, India last month, killing 241 passengers and crew along with 19 people on the ground. “The plane is in your hands,” the flight captain reportedly told co-pilot Clive Kunder, according to two sources speaking to Corriere della Sera who are familiar with the cockpit voice recordings from the fatal Air India flight, citing the black boxes recovered from the crash in India.
Read: Wall Street Journal: “Air India pilot cut fuel supply to engines” – The co-pilot’s question minutes before the disaster
The sources noted that it is common practice for a flight captain to hand over controls to the co-pilot during takeoff. The aircraft took off at 13:38:39 and remained airborne for approximately 30 seconds before losing power and crashing into a residential area.
According to a Wall Street Journal revelation, recorded dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India Boeing 787 shows that the captain was the one who cut the fuel supply to the engines.
Moreover, the co-pilot asked him why he did it and reportedly requested to restore fuel flow before the crash.
The WSJ revelation came just 24 hours after reports suggesting that the aircraft’s captain had been suffering from depression in recent years. “He had taken medical leave from flying duties for the past 3-4 years,” said an Indian aviation safety expert. The 56-year-old pilot had taken sick leave following his mother’s death, as he was not in good psychological condition.
The critical minutes in the cockpit
According to the report, the co-pilot who was at the controls of the 787 asked the highly experienced captain why he turned the switches controlling fuel supply to both engines to the “cutoff” position, seconds after the long-haul aircraft bound for London had taken off from the runway.
The captain denied doing it.
However, according to the preliminary investigation report released Saturday (July 12, 2025) by the Indian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), while the long-haul passenger aircraft had reached a speed of 180 knots (333 kilometers per hour) and had just taken off, the fuel supply switches for both engines were turned from the “run” position to the “cutoff” position, one second apart from each other. The text does not specify by whom.
The engines immediately lost all power. The preliminary report did not assign blame for the disaster, but noted that when one of the pilots asked the other why he stopped fuel supply to the engines, the other replied that he had not done it.
The co-pilot was Clive Kunder, 32 years old, with 3,403 flight hours, while the captain was Sumit Sabawal, 56 years old, with 15,638 flight hours.
The aircraft lost altitude and crashed into buildings within half a minute.
