The captain of an Air India plane that crashed last month killing 260 people had promised he would return home hours before jetting off on the doomed flight.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, was the senior pilot onboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that plummeted into a residential area in Ahmedabad on June 12, killing 241 people on board and 19 people on the ground.
The veteran aviator, who had more than 8,200 hours in the cockpit, is being looked into by investigators over suggestions he turned off the plane’s fuel switches, causing it to lose power.
The plane had set off to London at 1:38pm and remained airborne for about 30 seconds before losing power and falling to the ground. Upon impact, it was engulfed by a huge fireball, claiming the lives of all but one person on board.
A preliminary report into the tragedy revealed that before the crash, two fuel switches – which are used to start or shut down the engines and are typically left on during flight – were moved from ‘Run’ to ‘Cutoff’, depriving the engines of fuel.
The report also revealed there had been confusion in the cabin when Sabharwal and his co-pilot Clive Kunder, 28, realised the fault, before desperate attempts were made to flick them back.
Sources close to the investigation believe recordings of the conversation from the Boeing’s black box support the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines.
But, Sabharwal’s final words to a security guard at his apartment complex, where his elderly father also lived, would suggest otherwise. ‘Please, take care of papa. I will be back soon,’ he reportedly said just hours before the crash.
