The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ruled out a fuel switch issue in the Air India 171 plane that crashed in Ahmedabad, killing 241 on board and 19 on the ground. This comes after the flipping of the switch from ‘run’ to ‘cutoff’ and the sequence of events that led up to the moment as well as what happened subsequently has become the focus of the investigation. 

“We can say with a high level of confidence is it doesn’t appear to be a mechanical issue with the Boeing fuel control unit,” said Bryan Bedford, the FAA’s administrator. He added that the FAA employees had taken the units out, tested them and had inspectors get on aircraft and review them. 

“We feel very comfortable that this isn’t an issue with inadvertent manipulation of fuel control,” he said.

The switches control fuel flow to aircraft engines, enabling pilots to start or shut them down on the ground. They also allow manual intervention during in-flight engine failures. 

Bedford’s statement reiterates what Air India had said following the completion of the precautionary inspections of the fuel control switch (FCS) locking mechanism in all of its Boeing 787s and 737s. “In the inspections, no issues were found with the said locking mechanism,” it said, noting that the inspections had begun voluntarily on July 12, two days before the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s (DGCA’s) directive, and were completed within the prescribed deadline. 

A preliminary report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released earlier this month found that the switches had almost simultaneously flipped from “run” to “cutoff” shortly after takeoff. This caused the engines to lose power. 

The AAIB report also stated that the cockpit voice recorder recorded a conversation between the pilots in which one asked the other why he cut the fuel off, to which the other responded that he didn’t.