Air India Captain Possibly Shut Off Fuel Before Fatal Crash, WSJ Reveals

Flight AI171 was operating from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, the airline said.

Wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane sits on the open ground, outside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, where it took off and crashed nearby shortly afterwards, in Ahmedabad, India on July 12, 2025.

Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment.

A preliminary report released last week included detail about the switches, saying that the fuel to the plane's engines appeared to have been shut off just seconds after the plane lifted off.

According to that preliminary report, shortly after takeoff, the plane's fuel cutoff switches for both engines went from the \"RUN\" position to the \"CUTOFF\" position, one after another within one second -- shutting off fuel to both engines.

In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he hit the cutoff switch, according to the preliminary report. \"The other pilot responded that he did not do so,\" that report stated.

The WSJ report added detail to that conversation, saying the dialogue \"between the flight's two pilots indicates it was the captain who turned off switches that controlled fuel flowing to the plane's two engines,\" according to the WSJ's sources.

ABC News' Clara McMichael contributed to this report.

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