Given the mechanical saftey built into those switches, Unfortunately I guess that leaves us with two reasonable possibilities:
A) One of the pilots was somehow mistaken on the function of those switches and toggled them when they should not have. Then they genuinely thought they hadn’t when asked why they had cutoff fuel.
Or
B) One of the pilots chose to cut off fuel supply to both engines, intentionally bringing down the plane. They then lied to the other pilot when asked why they’d cutoff fuel.
When I watched the crash video, I thought that something cut the fuel off. Because that was the most likely reason for all engines to stop.
So, if the pilot or copilot did not do it (I assume it is not just a switch that you can trigger accidentally), what other system has the capability to switch off all fuel lines? Fire suppression systems? Some general “switch off”? And how hard would it be to restart fuel supply? Is it possible to override e.g. such a fire suppression system?
Both the left and right switchs were moved to ‘cutoff’, one pilot recognized this and asked the other pilot why, the other pilot denied doing it, then the switches were returned to ‘run’ and the engines began to re-light (this is all straight from the black box recorder). It was too late to recover though, so the plane went down.
There is a mechanical detent requiring you to pull each switch out, then down. They had to be moved deliberately.
Sounds like the pilots killed the fuel, and did not mean to do so. Having watched the video, and being totally ignorant of this sort of thing, that makes sense of what I saw.
I’m not trusting any report until I have had heard from Admiral Cloudberg. If you’re not familiar, plane crash investigation is what he does. He’s completely unbiased and seems to be the expert, at least for us layman.
I watched a very comprehensive and professional video by Captain Steeeve on this subject earlier today. He didn’t outright literally say that one of the pilots deliberately downed the plane, but it was very clear that he thought that was the only explanation that really made sense here. Why do you say it sounds like they “did not mean to do so”? The switches are designed to not be movable without considerable deliberation and intent, you can’t just bump these with your knee and switch them off. And both pilots were plenty experienced enough to know that you don’t turn those switches off at that point in the flight.
Highly recommend everyone give this a listen. It covered most of the other possibilities people are bringing up in this thread:
- They have to be pulled out, moved, and pushed back in to change the state
- The plane cannot take off with them in the wrong position
- There is no procedure to ever toggle both off at the same time, and no procedure to toggle them off period at their low altitude
- Both were toggled off within 1 seconds of each other
- The engines were functioning normally when they were toggled off
Captain Steve really tried to not blame the pilots in previous videos about this crash, in fact he really believed it had to be something else, so it says a lot that this is the only conclusion he can come up with.
In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx20p2x9093t
Until there’s independent evidence otherwise I’m going to assume either fudged maintenance reports or the switch designer at boeing is about to commit suicide by shooting themself in the back of the head hours before talking to the press.
Surely someone committing suicide and taking hundreds of people with him in the process wouldn’t lie about it.
Cloudberg is a she! You are absolutely correct that she is an excellent subject matter expert though.
No way, really?
Yes way https://bsky.app/profile/kyracloudy.bsky.social
Why the surprise? 😅
Mentour Pilot did a livestream today, he’s also one of the major commercial aviation YouTubers.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/11/india/air-india-crash-report-intl-latam
This article has a photo of the switches in question, and goes into more detail about how they work.
So I know there has to be a reason why these switches are vitally important but doesn’t it seem weird that you can take a catastrophic action like turning the fuel supply off when you’re in mid-takeoff? If you try and put a modern car in reverse at 65 MPH, the car is like “haha no” and ignores you.
From the article…
The fuel switches were “designed to be intentionally moved,” according to CNN safety analyst David Soucie, who said cases in which all fuel switches were turned off accidentally are “extremely rare.”
“Throughout the years, those switches have been improved to make sure that they cannot be accidentally moved and that they’re not automatic. They don’t move themselves in any manner,” Soucie said on Friday.
And the photo of the throttle (middle) and fuel cutoff switches (bottom):
There’s just one-level-deeper of questions I’d have here. How were the switches designed such that they prevented accidental activation? Because it looks like they just get simply flipped down. Could it be pull-out-and-down? Or maybe there’s a lot of resistance during the switch action?
They have metal detents; you have to pull the lever out, then push it down against a reasonably heavy spring.
These had to be very deliberately moved to the cutoff position.
How were the switches designed such that they prevented accidental activation? Because it looks like they just get simply flipped down. Could it be pull-out-and-down? Or maybe there’s a lot of resistance during the switch action?
The lever-lock fuel switches are designed to prevent accidental activation - they must be pulled up to unlock before flipping, a safety feature dating back to the 1950s. This isn’t a new or weird design. It’s essentially the standard used in basically every plane because it works.
“It would be almost impossible to pull both switches with a single movement of one hand, and this makes accidental deployment unlikely,” a Canada-based air accidents investigator, who wanted to remain unnamed, told the BBC.
You can also just throttle back, which would have the same effect.
Yeah and of course, you can also just ram the thing into the ground. I hate to think this was a deliberate act, but it’s sure sounding like it.
Apparently they need to be pulled to change their orientation, I’m wondering if the mechanism simply wore out?
Not likely. These things are checked before every flight.
Dude. It’s Air India.
Never take Air India.
If that does not take away from the fact that these Pilots were very well skilled.
If the company is at fault it’s due to over scheduling since preliminary report indicates no mechanical failures.
It’s not the skills I’m concerned about
Skilled yes, but apparently concealing a mental health issue. This is a huge cultural issue in aviation. Nobody wants to lose their job, so you just bury it.
There’s absolutely no proof that these Pilots were suicidal. I think speculation of such is disrespectful until further evidence shows such things such as in the case of MH 370 which is highly speculated with a lot of evidence to be a pilot suicide.
There are redundant systems on modern planes that can handle multiple failures. If they’re saying it’s fuel related my guess is dirty jet fuel. It would explain a stuck fuel valve. There’s lots of ground crew checks before flight, and one is checking the fuel tanks for contamination. Just a speculation.
These switches are evidently monitored by the aircraft’s systems, as the investigators seem to know for a fact when these switches were moved. This is not a “failure”, unless the switch moved by itself.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to “I reckon” this, when we know why the engines stopped.
From the article:
The plane’s fuel was tested and found to be of satisfactory quality,
If that’s all true: Why do these suicidal fucks take others out with them?
If it’s not true: Does Boeing have another catastrophic pattern failure?
Why? I don’t know. But some really do.
2015 there was the Germanwings flight where one suicidal pilot locked the other one out of the cockpit after he went to the loo and then intentionally crashed the plane in the Alps, killing everyone on board.
