The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Tuesday submitted its preliminary report on the Ahmedabad Air India 171 plane crash to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and other relevant authorities.
The report is based on the bureau's initial assessment and findings gathered in the early phase of the investigation, reported ANI. The report will be released to the public later this week. While the contents of the preliminary report are not known, it is believed that it will give critical information about what caused the June 12 crash.
International Investigation teams like the United Kingdom's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the US National Transportation Safety Board are also conducting seperate investigations.
The plane flying to London from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport crashed within 32 seconds of take-off. The incident killed a total of 270 people, leaving just one survivor. The aircraft involved in the incident was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
The black boxes of the plane — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — were recovered in the days that followed, from the crash site on June 13 and the debris on June 16, respectively.
Three Air India training pilots attempted to recreate the scenarios a week after the incident in Mumbai with the airline's Boeing 787 fleet. In an unsuccessful attempt, they tried to create situations of electrical failure that could trigger dual engine failure, which was an assumption of what happened to the aircraft.
Investigations are also on the way to assess whether a dual-engine failure would have resulted in the crash. Pilots on Air India's Boeing 787 fleet are not trained to deal with a dual-engine failure at an altitude of less than 400 feet, as in the case of AI-171.
The pilots also replicated the precise trim sheet data of AI-171 — a document used in aviation to calculate and record an aircraft's weight and balance, ensuring the center of gravity is within safe limits for takeoff, flight and landing.
Investigators have downloaded the data from the black boxes and are examining the position of the fuel switches on the flight. They are also trying to corroborate the data with any wreckage of the fuel switches that may have been found, which would be crucial in ascertaining whether any of the engines were accidentally switched off by the pilots during a critical phase of the flight.
