India’s Supreme Court said no one in the country believed the deadly Air India crash in June was the captain’s fault while castigating an American publication for causing pain to his family.
An Air India Boeing Dreamliner crashed moments after taking off for London from the western city of Ahmedabad on 12 June. The aircraft lost power, veered off course and hit a medical college hostel near the airport, killing 229 passengers, 12 crew members and 19 people on the ground. Only one passenger survived.
According to a preliminary investigation report released by the Indian government, the pilots sounded confused shortly before the crash as the plane’s fuel engine switches had almost simultaneously flipped from “run” position to “cutoff” soon after take-off.
An analysis of the report showed that first officer Clive Kunder was in control of the jet for take-off and at the moment of the crash. On the cockpit voice recorder, Kunder was heard asking the other pilot, captain Sumeet Sabharwal, why he had flipped the switches, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, citing unnamed sources.
The captain replied that he hadn’t.
Hearing a petition filed by the late captain’s father, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, Justices Surya Kant and Joymala Bagchi noted on Friday that the pilot was blameless for the tragedy.
Mr Sabharwal told the court that two officials from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau had visited him and implied that his son cut the fuel to the plane’s engines after take-off.
“It’s extremely unfortunate, this crash, but you should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed. Nobody can blame him for anything,” Justice Surya Kant told the bereaved father.
Justice Bagchi added that there was no insinuation against the pilot in the preliminary investigation report.
“One pilot asked whether the fuel was cut off by the other, the other said no,” he noted. “There’s no suggestion of fault in that report.”
The court called out the WSJ for claiming the captain had turned off the switches and said the American newspaper’s reporting on the matter was nasty and had caused his family grave pain.
“We are not bothered by foreign reports. Your remedy should then be before a foreign court. That is nasty reporting. No one in India believes it was the pilot's fault,” the court said.
At a previous hearing in September, the court had observed that it was “irresponsible” to blame the pilots based on a preliminary investigation, which the Indian government had described as "very clean" and "very thorough".
“If tomorrow someone irresponsibly says that pilot A or B was at fault, the family will suffer,” the court had said, noting the importance of ensuring confidentiality until the inquiry was complete. “What happens if the final inquiry report later finds no fault?”
Families of four of the Air India crash victims have filed a case in the US against Boeing and Honeywell, which made the switches for the Dreamliner. The lawsuit alleges that a defective fuel control switch led to the disaster.
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