Preliminary report indicates that the Captain intentionally crashed it. Suicide.
From what I have read, intentional sabotage is not the official result of the investigation....but something happened with the fuel cut off switches...seems purposeful...could the pilot have been “drug induced”impaired ? Did they find the bodies of the pilots? Were the bodies intact enough for chemical analysis?
I believe an off duty pilot riding in a cockpit in 2023 in USA tried to shut down the engines mid flight....maybe a copycat on Air India?
It’s understandable that the pilot’s union is very concerned about this RAT deployment. They’re not buying the “suicide” theory for the June 787 crash. Their position is to defend the pilots, as expected. They almost always do.
This most recent 787 flight, though it landed safely, had a fault in the Bus Power Control Unit (BPCU). Since the BPCU helps distribute power, a failure or glitch there could inadvertently cause backup systems like the RAT to trigger. This unit could have caused the RAT deployment that wasn’t supposed to happen, meaning the normal RAT deployment conditions were never met.
Because both incidents involve RAT deployment and possible electrical/fuel/engine issues, the union is concerned there could be a pattern or common defect.
The Indian gov’t investigators conclusively say the fuel switches were moved to cutoff, and then back on. Then again this means the wreckage showed the cutoff switches were in the “on” position, which means something else - maybe an ACARS message or even a “click” recorded on the CVR, as well as the copilot’s comment - led them to conclude the switches were turned “off” then back to “on”.
The copilot (at the controls) asked why the Captain turned them off, suggesting he must have visually seen them in the off position, or perhaps saw the Captain turn them off. The Captain denied turning them off.
I don’t see how the BPCU could have caused the June crash that killed all 260 people on board given what we heard on the CVR, and the conclusion that the cutoff switches were moved. These are lever-lock switches that aren’t connected to a solenoid. The CVR strongly suggests the f/o saw them in the cutoff position, and the Captain took an excessively long time to restore them to “on”. The delay was at least 10 seconds before the first cutoff switch was restored to “on”, and another 4 seconds for the other one. That’s an eternity during the takeoff phase.
I still lean towards suicide.