A bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal is shedding new light on what may have caused last month’s tragic Air India that left 270 people dead.
The outlet added new details to the preliminary report from Indian authorities released last week, revealing it was the flight’s captain who switched off the aircraft’s fuel-control switches moments after takeoff.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by three aviation experts to examine the stunning details of the WSJ report and debate whether or not the pilot was deliberately trying to down the plane.
New Reporting
On June 12, an Air India Flight 171 headed for London’s Gatwick Airport horrifically crashed soon after taking off in Ahmedabad, India, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 29 individuals on the ground. The youngest victim is believed to have been just four years old. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British national flying to the U.K. with his brother, miraculously walked away from the scene.
In an exclusive report published late Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with U.S. officials’ early assessment of evidence uncovered in the crash investigation who say a black-box recording of dialogue between the flight’s two pilots – Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, and First Officer Clive Kunder, 32 – indicates it was the captain who turned off switches that controlled fuel flowing to the plane’s two engines.
The report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said the black-box recording from the plane captured one unidentified pilot asking the other why he moved the switches, while the other denied doing so. Sources told WSJ, however, that it was Sabharwal who cut the fuel.
According to the Journal, “the first officer who was flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner asked the more-experienced captain why he moved the switches to the ‘cutoff’ position after it climbed off the runway.” The people familiar with the tape said Kunder “expressed surprise and then panicked,” as Sabharwal “seemed to remain calm.”
Sources said that details in the preliminary report reached a similar conclusion about the captain, and the initial investigation uncovered the switches were moved in succession, one second apart. Both were then turned back on about 10 seconds later, but it did not prevent the crash.
The Pilot in Question
The AAIB report did not answer whether turning off the switches was accidental or deliberate, and the organization issued a statement following the publishing of the WSJ piece that said: “We urge both the public and the media to refrain from spreading premature narratives that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process.” AAIB added that, “at this stage, it is too early to reach to any definite conclusions.”
But Megyn said it is impossible to “stop speculation” when you are dealing with “a country that is not exactly known for its transparency on this kind of thing” and “you are talking about hundreds of people who may have just been mass murdered.”
The Journal reported that friends and neighbors remember Sabharwal as a “soft-spoken man devoted to caring for his ailing father.” He started his aviation career in the early 1990s and attended a prestigious flight school in India. According to The Telegraph, he had 15,000 flight hours and had his last Class I medical exam, which has a psych component, in September 2024.
Captain Mohan Ranganathan, a leading aviation safety expert in India, told The Telegraph that he has heard from “several Air India pilots” that Sabharwal “had some depression and mental health issues” and “had taken time off from flying in the last three to four years.”
Air India declined to comment on The Telegraph story, but an official working for the airline’s parent company, Tata Group, told the outlet Sabharwal had not taken medical leave recently, though he did take bereavement leave in 2022 following the death of his mother. “His medical records were submitted as part of the investigation, and the preliminary report did not find anything noteworthy,” the official said.
Competing Theories
Decorated U.S. Naval aviator and Top Gun graduate Matthew “Wiz” Buckley called the situation an “absolute horror” that “looks like a murder-suicide” along the lines of EgyptAir Flight 990 or Germanwings Flight 9525, which were both deliberately crashed.
“All indications are that the captain selected the cut-off position on the fuel switches, [and it took] about 10 seconds for that first officer who was flying the airplane to be a little confused and look around going, ‘Hey, what are we doing here,’ and then to put them back on,” he said. “And sadly, one of the motors pulled up a little bit above idle and the other one was just trying to come online. But it was too late.”
Retired Naval commander and current American Airlines pilot “Captain Steve” Scheibner said video of crash is unlike anything he has ever seen and “the only answer” is dual engine failure. So, the question becomes, Scheibner said, “what caused the dual engine failure?”
“This Wall Street Journal confirmation, plus the preliminary report… parse their words a little bit. They said the fuel control switches transitioned from run to cut-off. They don’t transition. Somebody has to place them there,” he explained. “It is a three-step process. You have to grasp the switch, pull it up because it’s spring loaded, pull it down, and let it go… A human has to do that.”
“There is no… procedure that I know of at 200 feet off the ground on rotate where you would grab those switches and put them to cut off,” Scheibner added. “Either way, it was pilot error. Whether it was intentional or unintentional, I think now the Wall Street Journal has kind of concluded that it’s intentional and that’s no surprise.”
But Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and founder of Ask the Pilot, said there is still more to learn about what happened. “I think we need to start out by saying that there is a lot here that we just don’t know… We don’t even have a CVR [cockpit voice recorder] transcript yet,” he noted. “I don’t necessarily buy the murder-suicide scenario. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. There is evidence leaning in that direction strongly, but the dynamics of the crash don’t quite make sense that way.”
In his view, if maximum casualties was the goal, this wasn’t a sure-fire plan. “Let me get this straight: You’re going to shut the engines off at the moment of rotation and glide to a crash? There are so many unknowns in a scenario like that. There’s no guarantee that the crash would be catastrophic, that everybody would be killed,” Smith explained. “You go back to EgyptAir, and Germanwings, and MH370, which almost certainly was a murder-suicide… [and] it just it feels different.”
While he admitted it sounds “preposterous,” Smith said there “remains the distinct possibility” that the fuel switches were shut off “accidentally and inadvertently in a moment of absurd absentmindedness.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview by tuning in to episode 1,110 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.