No blame on pilot in preliminary Air India crash report, says top court
India’s Supreme Court stated on Friday that a preliminary report on the June Air India crash that killed 260 people does not imply any fault on the part of the captain.
The court will, however, hear a plea on November 10 from the pilot’s father, 91-year-old Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, seeking an independent investigation by a panel of aviation experts led by a retired Supreme Court judge, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
Sabharwal, who had earlier criticised the official inquiry, claimed that two officials from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) suggested his son, pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, had cut fuel to the aircraft’s engines after takeoff. The government dismissed this allegation, describing the ongoing investigation as “very clean” and “very thorough.”
An interim report by the AAIB released earlier this year noted that the plane’s fuel engine switches had almost simultaneously flipped from “run” to “cutoff” shortly after takeoff.
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