> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.
So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally, they need to be unlocked first by pulling them out.
> In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.
And both pilots deny doing it.
It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
well hold your horses there... from the FAA in their 2019 report linked above:
> The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to supply or cutoff fuel to the engines. The fuel control switch has a locking feature to prevent inadvertent operation that could result in unintended switch movement between the fuel supply and fuel cutoff positions. In order to move the switch from one position to the other under the condition where the locking feature is engaged, it is necessary for the pilot to lift the switch up while transitioning the switch position. If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown. Boeing informed the FAA that the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar on various Boeing airplane models. The table below identifies the affected airplane models and related part numbers (P/Ns) of the fuel control switch, which is manufactured by Honeywell.
> If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
You're leaping into the minds of others and drawing conclusions of their intent. One of them moved the levers. It could've been an unplanned reaction, a terrible mistake, or it could've been intentional. We may never know the intention even with a comprehensive and complete investigation. To claim otherwise is arrogance.
> So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally
FAA issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin SAIB NM-18-33 in 2018 warning that on several Boeing models including the 787 the locking mechanism of the fuel switches could be inoperative.
Yeah and the other pilot flipped the switches back on and one of the engines started spooling up but it was too late.
Murder-suicide looks like the likely conclusion, given that flipping the cutoff switches requires a very deliberate action. That said, it's not entirely impossible that due to stress or fatigue the pilot had some kind of mental lapse and post-flight muscle memory (of shutting off the engines) kicked in when the aircraft lifted off.
> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.
> As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC.
Damn. That's pretty quick to diagnose and take action.
Boeing's probably gonna have a big sigh of relief over this one.
I once worked with a software engineer who would do things and then bald face lie about it. This reminds me of that person.
Me: “The build is breaking right after you checked in. Why did you do that?”
Him:”I did not do so.”
Me: “The commit shows it as you. And when I rolled back everything builds.”
Him:”It must have been someone else.”
Does the Flight Data Recorder consider the physical position of the fuel switches or does it get the information from some fly-by-wire part that could be buggy?
The conversation would suggest that the switches were in CUTOFF position, but there is also a display that summarizes the engine status.
There is no conversation that mentions flipping the switch to RUN again.
EDIT: Why is there no Cockpit Video Recorder? The days of limited storage are over.
Suicide is quite a stretch without any supporting evidence from the pilots' backgrounds. I would take mental fog, cognitive overload, wrong muscle memory, even a defective fuel cutoff system over suicide.
Not that humans are known to behave rationally when trying to commit suicide, but it’s interesting that the switches were re-engaged successfully without protest or a fight. It’s just an interesting detail to wonder about.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
The balance of probability might tend to support that hypothesis. However I'm wondering if it was just something involuntary. My ex for instance who learned to drive on a stick shift would randomly stall the engine after a few weeks driving an automatic.
> And both pilots deny doing it.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
You’re trying to prove a negative here.
I am not familiar with the 787 operations, but there are a few issues that need to be sorted out first:
- altitude when pilots start the after takeoff checklist
- if there are any other switches that are operated in tandem in the general vicinity of where the engine cutoff switches are
- if the cutoff switches had the locking mechanisms present, and if not, if they could be moved inadvertently by the pilot flying hand
Discarding other possibilities in an investigation can have adverse consequences.
Did you ever always push the right buttons every time?
and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec
Or more precisely, the signals which come from them were found to behave as such.
Without any audible record of turning the switches off, I wouldn't blame the pilots without first checking the wiring and switches themselves for faults. This reminds me of the glitches caused by tin whiskers.
I wonder if the switches are still in tact after the crash? Can they verify that the switches are mechanically sound? If so, seems highly likely it was intentional.
Reminds me of 2017 Las Vegas shooting. The perpetrator looked and acted completely normal till the day of shooting and all his issues like anxiety or losing money was nothing far from ordinary. And what seems all of a sudden did a well planned shooting and didn't bother to leave a note or tell his story.
>It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
This kind of attitude gets innocent people behind bars for life. Disgusting.
It's difficult to conclude anything until the investigation is finished and I hope the ones who are carrying it out are as levelheaded, neutral and professional as possible.
This is highly reminiscent to me of this case. [0] The co-pilot accidentally hit the wrong switch and then quietly corrected his mistake later, without resetting the previous switch (which led to feathering).
Cutting the engines within seconds of leaving the ground doesn't fit suicide very well. I'd expect something more like flying into the side of a mountain or heading really far out into the Indian ocean until you vanish from radar and cause a big mystery.
For instance, you might deliberately kill yourself by driving your car really fast into something solid, but you probably wouldn't try to do that while backing out of the garage.
Do you know if the mechanical position of the switch guarantees its electronic state without any possibility for hardware malfunction? If no, then you are claiming a person made one of the most grave acts of inhumanity ever.
This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction
It's interesting to see how people manage incomplete information.
You could have made the same assumptions after the first MCAS crash, much like boeing assumed pilot error. It's easy, comforting and sometimes kills people because it makes you stop looking.
it makes sense to me that the pilot who said "I did not do it" actually did do it without realizing it, was supposed to be putting the landing gear up when he committed a muscle memory mistake. it happened around the time the landing gear should be up, and this explanation matches what was said in the cockpit, and the fact that the landing gear wasn't retracted. I think this idea was even floated initially by the youtube pilot/analysts I watch but dismissed as unlikely.
One of the nice things about finally having the preliminary report is I get to stop hearing all of the same assumptions/theories/YouTuber said/"a guy I know got a leaked report"/etc in water cooler talk at work because the preliminary report solidly disproved all of them so far. If anyone even had and stuck with an idea matching this report it wouldn't have stood out in the conversations anyways.
The collection of comments on this post remind me it'll just be a brand new set of random guesses until the final report is released. Or worse - the final report reaches no further conclusions and it just has to fade out of interest naturally over time.
The landing gear lever is rather prominently featured in the 787 in a panel central to the cockpit layout so that either pilot can easily reach it. For decades and across many manufacturers, the landing gear lever has traditionally featured a knob that deliberately resembles an airplane wheel. It's very hard to mistake it for anything else. It's actuated by simply moving it up or down.
The fuel control switches are behind the throttle stalks above the handles to release the engine fire suppression agents. These switches are markedly smaller and have guards on each side protecting them from accidental manipulation. You need to reach behind and twirl your fingers around a bit to reach them. Actuating these switches requires pulling the knob up sufficiently to clear a stop lock before then rotating down. There are two switches that were activated in sequence and in short order.
The pilot monitoring is responsible for raising the gear in response to the pilot flyings' instruction.
I would find it very difficult to believe this was a muscle memory mistake. At the very least, I would want to more evidence supporting such a proposition.
This idea strikes me as even more unlikely than someone shifting their moving vehicle into reverse while intending to activate the window wipers.
Is there a video feed of the cockpit inside the black box?
If not there should be one as even my simple home wifi camera can record hours of hd video on the small sd card. And If there is, wouldn't that help to instantly identify such things?
This is exactly how the investigations are NOT conducted. You don't find the evidence that confirms your theory and call it a day when the pieces sorta fit together. You look solely at the evidence and listen to what they tell you leaving aside what you think could have happened.
If you shut off the engines a couple of dozen meters above ground shouldn’t every alarm be blaring or there should be some sort of additional lever you have to pull way out of the way to enable shutting off the engine that close to the ground.
I just want to call out that, whatever the facts of this case, pilot heroism is way more common than pilot murder. This is off the top of my head, so don't quote me on the precise details, I'm probably misremembering some things. But a few of my favorite examples:
- British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out. The head flight attendant holds onto his legs to keep him in the plane. The copilot and flight attendant think he is dead, but they keep the situation under control and land the plane.
- United 232: An engine explodes in the tail of an MD-10. Due to rotten luck and weaknesses in the design, it takes out all three of the redundant hydraulic systems, rendering the control surfaces inoperable.
There's a pilot onboard as a passenger who, it just so happens, has read about similar incidents in other aircraft and trained for this scenario on his own initiative. He joins the other pilots in the cockpit and they figure out how to use the engines to establish rudimentary control.
They crash just short of the runway. 112 people die, but 184 people survive.
- Pinnacle 3701: Two pilots mess around with an empty plane. They take it up to it's operational ceiling. While they're goofing off, they don't realize they're losing momentum. They try to correct too late and cannot land safely.
In their last moments they decide to sacrifice any chance they have to survive by not deploying their landing gear. They choose to glide for the maximum distance to avoid hitting houses, rather than maximizing how much impact is absorbed. They do hit a house but no one else is killed.
> British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out.
This one is a good illustration of how better design can help prevent accidents or make them less severe.
The error the maintenance people made was that when they replaced the window and the 90 screws that hold it on 84 of the screws they used were were 0.66 mm smaller in diameter than they should have been.
The window on that model plane was fitted from the outside, so the job of the screws was to hold it there against the force of the pressure difference at altitude. The smaller screws were too weak to do that.
If instead the designers of the plane had used plug type windows which are fitted from the inside then the pressure difference at altitude works to hold the window in place. Even with no screws it would be fine at altitude. Instead the job of the screws would be to keep gravity from making the window fall in when the plane is not high enough for the pressure difference to keep it in place.
My vague memory of the Air Emergency episode on this (AKA Air Crash Investigation, Air Disasters, Mayday, and maybe others depending on what country and channel you are watching it on) is that after this accident many aircraft companies switched to mostly using plug windows on new designs.
- Pilot calculated incorrect fuel due to metric/imperial unit mixup, and ran out of fuel midair.
- Said pilot performed an impossible glider-sideslip maneuver to rapidly bleed airspeed just-in-time for an emergency landing at an abandoned airfield, having to completely rely on eyeballing the approach.
If you're focused on whether or not the pilot cares (or is even alive), you've lost the plot. The point is to keep passengers alive regardless of the pilot.
There's no real point to considering what happens if the pilot wants to murder people on board. Of course they will succeed....
> On Jul 12th 2025 (UTC) India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India. The stated MN4 computer with faulty soldering, that might weaken and lose contact due to the thermal stress after a number of cycles, interprets data and commands fuel metering valves - with the lost contact attaching the MN4 processor to the EEC intermittent electrical contact, loss of signal processing and engine control faults can occur. The SB writes under conditions for the SB: "An LOTC (Loss Of Thrust Control) event has occurred due to an EEC MN4 microprocessor solder ball failure." According to discussions in the industry it may be possible with the number of cycles VT-ANB had already completed, the solder balls were weakened sufficiently to detach the MN4 from the EEC momentarily due to loads during the takeoff rotation leading to the loss of control of thrust and shut down of the engines.
Still quite early in the investigation, and so many things to consider. I don't know why online communities have been so quick to gravitate towards the murder/suicide theory. I thought aviation enthusiasts of all people would want to keep an open mind until every other possibility is ruled out, however minuscule it might seem.
Each of the fuel switches on the 787 is equipped with a locking mechanism that is supposed to prevent accidental movement, experts said. To turn the fuel supply on, the switch must be pulled outward and then moved to a “RUN” position, where it is released and settles back into a locked position. To turn the fuel supply off, the switch must be pulled outward again, moved to the “CUTOFF” position and then released again.
Or they could be inadvertently flipped if the "locking" version was not installed:
(see the avherald link):
>>India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India.
> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery.
I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered by hydrazine that can spool up in about a second.
The F-16 EPU is to keep the flight controls powered so the plane doesn't immediately become uncontrollable following engine failure. The EPU doesn't provide thrust of any kind.
The 787 and nearly every other commercial aircraft with powered flight controls [1] (fly-by-wire or traditional) has emergency power available via RAT and/or APU, and any fly-by-wire aircraft has batteries to keep the flight control computers running through engine failure to power supply being restored by the RAT and/or APU. Due to its unusually high use of electrical systems, the 787 has particularly large lithium batteries for these cases. There is no need for an additional EPU because the emergency systems already work fine (and did their jobs as expected in this case). You just can't recover from loss of nearly all engine thrust at that phase of takeoff. [2]
1. The notable exceptions to having a RAT for emergency flight controls are the 737 and 747 variants prior to the 747-8. In the 747 case, the four engines would provide sufficient hydraulic power while windmilling in flight and thus no additional RAT would be necessary. The 737 has complete mechanical reversion for critical flight controls, and so can be flown without power of any kind. There is sufficient battery power to keep backup instruments running for beyond the maximum glide time from altitude - at which point the aircraft will have "landed" one way or another.
2. There is only one exception of a certified passenger aircraft with a system for separate emergency thrust. Mexicana briefly operated a special version of the early 727 which would be fitted with rocket assist boosters for use on particularly hot days to ensure that single-engine-out climb performance met certification criteria. Mexicana operated out of particularly "hot and high" airports like Mexico City, which significantly degrade aircraft performance. On the worst summer days, the performance degradation would have been severe enough that the maximum allowable passenger/baggage/fuel load would have been uneconomical without the margin provided by the emergency rockets. I'm not aware of them ever being used on a "real" flight emergency outside of the testing process, and I think any similar design today would face a much higher bar to reach certification.
I find these comments very illustrative when taken together- they nicely show how different explanations sound spot on until you read the next one. Inexplicable is one of the great words in the English language
>Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India.
I'm completely ignorant about this matter, but why is it even possible to cut off fuel while taking off? Shouldn't there be a control that completely disables this? Is there actually a situation where cutting off both engines could be necessary and wouldn't lead to a catastrophe?
The general principle of aircraft control is that the pilot has the final say on how it is operated, not the designer, because you never know when you will need to take extraordinary measures. And the pilot generally prefers to return to the ground safely.
I'm assuming fuel being cut off is salvageable if not in the middle of a densely populated city, especially if above a plain or water. So it could be the favorable option in case of an engine fire.
Also, such complexity would introduce additional points of failure - as a sister comment mentions, a faulty altimeter (or whatever sensor) could prevent you from cutting off fuel when you need to.
What makes me more inclined to suicide is that this might have been the perfect time to do this so that even a small interruption in fuel would be catastrophic.
If this is the case, you have to then think about why this pilot would want suicide but also murder all aboard the plane. It's a bit irrational if they wanted to just suicide - you can easily just cut your own throat, hang yourself, or jump off a tall building.
Fire, probably. But also, how complicated would you make the system if you needed to prevent certain switches from working during certain times of flight? At some point... we're all just in the hands of the people in the cockpit.
It's safe to state these fuel cutoff switches aren't to be touched in-flight unless the word 'fire' is said beforehand. Even then, you only perform fuel cutoff for the flaming engine. If the copilot was busy with takeoff, there is exactly one other person in the entire world that could have flipped both switches. We may never know which one flipped them back.
As we just reported, the report says that according to data from the flight recorder both the fuel control switches, which are normally used to switch the engines on or off when on the ground, were moved from the run to the cutoff position shortly after takeoff. This caused both engines to lose thrust.
The preliminary report suggests this is pilot error.
From my (limited) understanding you cannot really switch these off inadvertently as they require a couple of actions in order to be switched off. So it would mean one of the pilots switched these off (and they were a few seconds later switched on again but it was too late).
But there was audio, too, and one pilot asked the other "why did you switch these off" and the second one said "I didn't".
The India AAIB website (https://aaib.gov.in/) is not responding ... For anyone who read the report, was there information about the age & experience of the pilots?
reached v1, then when airborn fuel cut off. Seems like there was a FAA report like in 2018 that recommended few airplane models (incl this one) to check the fuel valves correctly, seems like air india didn't do it. Turns out it was made by Honeywell
Video would definitively show whether either pilot moved these switches or if some other mechanism caused the movement.
The aviation industry has consistently resisted cockpit video recording despite decades of available technology. The pilot unions argue privacy concerns, but cases like this demonstrate the value it would have. Current audio captured the pilots' denials, but without visual confirmation we may never be able to definitively determine who turned the engines off.
The switch had to be operated deliberately, but still a UX fail on a modern aircraft if cutting off fuel to the engines does not result in an audible alert/alarm which both pilots can hear - especially at that altitude.
It would not make any difference. They were too low and did not have enough time to recover. They immediately switched back to on. Two captains is discussing it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0BetkXsLg).
It’s interesting to see how many people are bending over backwards here to avoid coming to the obvious conclusion. If this was pilot suicide, it’s a terrible thing. If it was somehow an error (which seems very unlikely) or two defective controls (which seems even more unlikely), then it remains a tragedy. But I don’t need to do mental gymnastics to come up with implausible hypotheticals.
This comment stream on HN is not a jury. We don’t have to refrain from making judgments right now about what happened. There is nothing wrong with rational people reaching a preliminary conclusion based on available evidence.
Rational people should also remain open to revising their judgments/conclusions if new information becomes available.
And we shouldn’t demand any specific consequences for anyone absent a trial.
It’s nowhere near an obvious conclusion. A failure with the locking mechanism or muscle memory confusion are just as likely, and probably other theories I’m not thinking of. More investigation is clearly needed, which is why this is called a preliminary report.
And this can't possibly be all the audio if the other pilot noticed the switch position, I would expect a lot more cussing and struggle.
So they didn't notice the switch position? The switch was in the right position but not really? Is this a rarely used switch that one might not look at (or know where to look) during regular use?
Dual engine failure on takeoff gives them about as much time to react as if the front passenger grabbed the steering wheel while on a windy mountain road and yanked them off a cliff.
It only takes a few seconds to completely screw everyone, but a bit longer for the consequences to occur.
The report says the black box reports the fuel cutoff switches being activated. That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them, it just means that the fly-by-wire system reacted to a fuel cutoff event.
"The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cutoff.
In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff.
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Even taking intent for granted, to deny suicide in a case like this would be to suppose that the person responsible expected to survive while everyone else died. What could possibly support that conclusion?
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Why wouldn’t this qualify as a murder-suicide, assuming your theory is correct?
As someone with no qualifications on this beyond occasionally playing some flight simulators, I can't think of a reason you would ever intentionally move the switches in flight (barring an emergency like a leak or fire or something) and unintentionally doing so seems extremely unlikely since generally "switches meant to be operated on the ground" are located well out of the way of "switches meant to be operated in flight". Though I believe Boeing does have them by the thrust levers, every type of fuel control switch I've seen has some sort of guard or mechanism that makes it effectively impossible to move the switch by simply bumping it.
So I can't imagine how it could have been done accidentally.
You mention "brain fart". There is certainly a long history of pilots selecting the wrong lever, or wrong switch. So, it is possible the pilot who denied switching the fuel off thought he had switched something else.
> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.
So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally, they need to be unlocked first by pulling them out.
> In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.
And both pilots deny doing it.
It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/NM-18-33
well hold your horses there... from the FAA in their 2019 report linked above:
> The Boeing Company (Boeing) received reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The fuel control switches (or engine start switches) are installed on the control stand in the flight deck and used by the pilot to supply or cutoff fuel to the engines. The fuel control switch has a locking feature to prevent inadvertent operation that could result in unintended switch movement between the fuel supply and fuel cutoff positions. In order to move the switch from one position to the other under the condition where the locking feature is engaged, it is necessary for the pilot to lift the switch up while transitioning the switch position. If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown. Boeing informed the FAA that the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar on various Boeing airplane models. The table below identifies the affected airplane models and related part numbers (P/Ns) of the fuel control switch, which is manufactured by Honeywell.
> If the locking feature is disengaged, the switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting the switch during transition, and the switch would be exposed to the potential of inadvertent operation. Inadvertent operation of the switch could result in an unintended consequence, such as an in-flight engine shutdown
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
You're leaping into the minds of others and drawing conclusions of their intent. One of them moved the levers. It could've been an unplanned reaction, a terrible mistake, or it could've been intentional. We may never know the intention even with a comprehensive and complete investigation. To claim otherwise is arrogance.
> So the fuel supply was cut off intentionally. The switches in question are also built so they cannot be triggered accidentally
FAA issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin SAIB NM-18-33 in 2018 warning that on several Boeing models including the 787 the locking mechanism of the fuel switches could be inoperative.
https://www.aviacionline.com/recommended-versus-mandatory-th...
Per FAA the checks were recommended but not mandatory.
Yeah and the other pilot flipped the switches back on and one of the engines started spooling up but it was too late.
Murder-suicide looks like the likely conclusion, given that flipping the cutoff switches requires a very deliberate action. That said, it's not entirely impossible that due to stress or fatigue the pilot had some kind of mental lapse and post-flight muscle memory (of shutting off the engines) kicked in when the aircraft lifted off.
> The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.
> As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC.
Damn. That's pretty quick to diagnose and take action.
Boeing's probably gonna have a big sigh of relief over this one.
I once worked with a software engineer who would do things and then bald face lie about it. This reminds me of that person.
Me: “The build is breaking right after you checked in. Why did you do that?” Him:”I did not do so.” Me: “The commit shows it as you. And when I rolled back everything builds.” Him:”It must have been someone else.”
That person was really annoying.
Does the Flight Data Recorder consider the physical position of the fuel switches or does it get the information from some fly-by-wire part that could be buggy?
The conversation would suggest that the switches were in CUTOFF position, but there is also a display that summarizes the engine status.
There is no conversation that mentions flipping the switch to RUN again.
EDIT: Why is there no Cockpit Video Recorder? The days of limited storage are over.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
Remember that incident where a cop pulled out his taser and tased the suspect? Except he pulled out his pistol and fired it.
The taser looks nothing like a pistol, feels nothing like it, yet it is still possible to confuse the two in the heat of the moment.
Suicide is quite a stretch without any supporting evidence from the pilots' backgrounds. I would take mental fog, cognitive overload, wrong muscle memory, even a defective fuel cutoff system over suicide.
Not that humans are known to behave rationally when trying to commit suicide, but it’s interesting that the switches were re-engaged successfully without protest or a fight. It’s just an interesting detail to wonder about.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
The balance of probability might tend to support that hypothesis. However I'm wondering if it was just something involuntary. My ex for instance who learned to drive on a stick shift would randomly stall the engine after a few weeks driving an automatic.
> And both pilots deny doing it. > It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
You’re trying to prove a negative here.
I am not familiar with the 787 operations, but there are a few issues that need to be sorted out first: - altitude when pilots start the after takeoff checklist
- if there are any other switches that are operated in tandem in the general vicinity of where the engine cutoff switches are
- if the cutoff switches had the locking mechanisms present, and if not, if they could be moved inadvertently by the pilot flying hand
Discarding other possibilities in an investigation can have adverse consequences.
Did you ever always push the right buttons every time?
and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec
Or more precisely, the signals which come from them were found to behave as such.
Without any audible record of turning the switches off, I wouldn't blame the pilots without first checking the wiring and switches themselves for faults. This reminds me of the glitches caused by tin whiskers.
I wonder if the switches are still in tact after the crash? Can they verify that the switches are mechanically sound? If so, seems highly likely it was intentional.
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
Is it possible it could have been an accident or a mistake by one of the pilots? How intention-proofed are engine cutoffs?
Given the recent boundless incompetence by Boeing why not ask if their is any way for such to fail out of scope of the normal interface?
Reminds me of 2017 Las Vegas shooting. The perpetrator looked and acted completely normal till the day of shooting and all his issues like anxiety or losing money was nothing far from ordinary. And what seems all of a sudden did a well planned shooting and didn't bother to leave a note or tell his story.
>It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.
This kind of attitude gets innocent people behind bars for life. Disgusting.
It's difficult to conclude anything until the investigation is finished and I hope the ones who are carrying it out are as levelheaded, neutral and professional as possible.
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Or a mechanical failure
This is highly reminiscent to me of this case. [0] The co-pilot accidentally hit the wrong switch and then quietly corrected his mistake later, without resetting the previous switch (which led to feathering).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti_Airlines_Flight_691
Cutting the engines within seconds of leaving the ground doesn't fit suicide very well. I'd expect something more like flying into the side of a mountain or heading really far out into the Indian ocean until you vanish from radar and cause a big mystery.
For instance, you might deliberately kill yourself by driving your car really fast into something solid, but you probably wouldn't try to do that while backing out of the garage.
So you're telling me that those switches don't have a voice that says "fuel cutoff switches transitioned" like in the movies? That's bad design
Do you know if the mechanical position of the switch guarantees its electronic state without any possibility for hardware malfunction? If no, then you are claiming a person made one of the most grave acts of inhumanity ever.
This sounds to me like an electronics issue - an intermittent, inadvertent state transition likely due to some PCB component malfunction
It's interesting to see how people manage incomplete information.
You could have made the same assumptions after the first MCAS crash, much like boeing assumed pilot error. It's easy, comforting and sometimes kills people because it makes you stop looking.
it makes sense to me that the pilot who said "I did not do it" actually did do it without realizing it, was supposed to be putting the landing gear up when he committed a muscle memory mistake. it happened around the time the landing gear should be up, and this explanation matches what was said in the cockpit, and the fact that the landing gear wasn't retracted. I think this idea was even floated initially by the youtube pilot/analysts I watch but dismissed as unlikely.
One of the nice things about finally having the preliminary report is I get to stop hearing all of the same assumptions/theories/YouTuber said/"a guy I know got a leaked report"/etc in water cooler talk at work because the preliminary report solidly disproved all of them so far. If anyone even had and stuck with an idea matching this report it wouldn't have stood out in the conversations anyways.
The collection of comments on this post remind me it'll just be a brand new set of random guesses until the final report is released. Or worse - the final report reaches no further conclusions and it just has to fade out of interest naturally over time.
The landing gear lever is rather prominently featured in the 787 in a panel central to the cockpit layout so that either pilot can easily reach it. For decades and across many manufacturers, the landing gear lever has traditionally featured a knob that deliberately resembles an airplane wheel. It's very hard to mistake it for anything else. It's actuated by simply moving it up or down.
The fuel control switches are behind the throttle stalks above the handles to release the engine fire suppression agents. These switches are markedly smaller and have guards on each side protecting them from accidental manipulation. You need to reach behind and twirl your fingers around a bit to reach them. Actuating these switches requires pulling the knob up sufficiently to clear a stop lock before then rotating down. There are two switches that were activated in sequence and in short order.
The pilot monitoring is responsible for raising the gear in response to the pilot flyings' instruction.
I would find it very difficult to believe this was a muscle memory mistake. At the very least, I would want to more evidence supporting such a proposition.
This idea strikes me as even more unlikely than someone shifting their moving vehicle into reverse while intending to activate the window wipers.
There is no possible way to confuse these two actions. There's a reason a wheel is attached to the gear lever.
Is there a video feed of the cockpit inside the black box?
If not there should be one as even my simple home wifi camera can record hours of hd video on the small sd card. And If there is, wouldn't that help to instantly identify such things?
> it makes sense to me that..
This is exactly how the investigations are NOT conducted. You don't find the evidence that confirms your theory and call it a day when the pieces sorta fit together. You look solely at the evidence and listen to what they tell you leaving aside what you think could have happened.
even though that raising the gear is a up motion and fuelcut off is a down motion?
If you shut off the engines a couple of dozen meters above ground shouldn’t every alarm be blaring or there should be some sort of additional lever you have to pull way out of the way to enable shutting off the engine that close to the ground.
I just want to call out that, whatever the facts of this case, pilot heroism is way more common than pilot murder. This is off the top of my head, so don't quote me on the precise details, I'm probably misremembering some things. But a few of my favorite examples:
- British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out. The head flight attendant holds onto his legs to keep him in the plane. The copilot and flight attendant think he is dead, but they keep the situation under control and land the plane.
Everyone survives - including the pilot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwHWNFdOvg
- United 232: An engine explodes in the tail of an MD-10. Due to rotten luck and weaknesses in the design, it takes out all three of the redundant hydraulic systems, rendering the control surfaces inoperable.
There's a pilot onboard as a passenger who, it just so happens, has read about similar incidents in other aircraft and trained for this scenario on his own initiative. He joins the other pilots in the cockpit and they figure out how to use the engines to establish rudimentary control.
They crash just short of the runway. 112 people die, but 184 people survive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT7CgWvD-x4
- Pinnacle 3701: Two pilots mess around with an empty plane. They take it up to it's operational ceiling. While they're goofing off, they don't realize they're losing momentum. They try to correct too late and cannot land safely.
In their last moments they decide to sacrifice any chance they have to survive by not deploying their landing gear. They choose to glide for the maximum distance to avoid hitting houses, rather than maximizing how much impact is absorbed. They do hit a house but no one else is killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMmCekKO_c
> British Airways 5390: An incorrect repair causes the windshield of a plane to be blown out mid flight. A pilot is nearly sucked out.
This one is a good illustration of how better design can help prevent accidents or make them less severe.
The error the maintenance people made was that when they replaced the window and the 90 screws that hold it on 84 of the screws they used were were 0.66 mm smaller in diameter than they should have been.
The window on that model plane was fitted from the outside, so the job of the screws was to hold it there against the force of the pressure difference at altitude. The smaller screws were too weak to do that.
If instead the designers of the plane had used plug type windows which are fitted from the inside then the pressure difference at altitude works to hold the window in place. Even with no screws it would be fine at altitude. Instead the job of the screws would be to keep gravity from making the window fall in when the plane is not high enough for the pressure difference to keep it in place.
My vague memory of the Air Emergency episode on this (AKA Air Crash Investigation, Air Disasters, Mayday, and maybe others depending on what country and channel you are watching it on) is that after this accident many aircraft companies switched to mostly using plug windows on new designs.
Mentour Pilot is a fantastic channel.
Here's another one:
Air Canada 143
- Pilot calculated incorrect fuel due to metric/imperial unit mixup, and ran out of fuel midair.
- Said pilot performed an impossible glider-sideslip maneuver to rapidly bleed airspeed just-in-time for an emergency landing at an abandoned airfield, having to completely rely on eyeballing the approach.
- No fatalties or serious injuries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvt7hP5a-0
If you're focused on whether or not the pilot cares (or is even alive), you've lost the plot. The point is to keep passengers alive regardless of the pilot.
There's no real point to considering what happens if the pilot wants to murder people on board. Of course they will succeed....
Almost 400 comments and no avherald link for reference?
https://avherald.com/h?article=528f27ec
> On Jul 12th 2025 (UTC) India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India. The stated MN4 computer with faulty soldering, that might weaken and lose contact due to the thermal stress after a number of cycles, interprets data and commands fuel metering valves - with the lost contact attaching the MN4 processor to the EEC intermittent electrical contact, loss of signal processing and engine control faults can occur. The SB writes under conditions for the SB: "An LOTC (Loss Of Thrust Control) event has occurred due to an EEC MN4 microprocessor solder ball failure." According to discussions in the industry it may be possible with the number of cycles VT-ANB had already completed, the solder balls were weakened sufficiently to detach the MN4 from the EEC momentarily due to loads during the takeoff rotation leading to the loss of control of thrust and shut down of the engines.
Still quite early in the investigation, and so many things to consider. I don't know why online communities have been so quick to gravitate towards the murder/suicide theory. I thought aviation enthusiasts of all people would want to keep an open mind until every other possibility is ruled out, however minuscule it might seem.
Each of the fuel switches on the 787 is equipped with a locking mechanism that is supposed to prevent accidental movement, experts said. To turn the fuel supply on, the switch must be pulled outward and then moved to a “RUN” position, where it is released and settles back into a locked position. To turn the fuel supply off, the switch must be pulled outward again, moved to the “CUTOFF” position and then released again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/world/asia/air-india-cras...
Or they could be inadvertently flipped if the "locking" version was not installed: (see the avherald link):
>>India's media report that the investigation is NOT focussing on a human action causing the fuel switches to appear in the CUTOFF position, but on a system failure. Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India.
> The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery.
I know it's probably not worth the hazmat tradeoff for such a rare event, but the F-16 has an EPU powered by hydrazine that can spool up in about a second.
The F-16 EPU is to keep the flight controls powered so the plane doesn't immediately become uncontrollable following engine failure. The EPU doesn't provide thrust of any kind.
The 787 and nearly every other commercial aircraft with powered flight controls [1] (fly-by-wire or traditional) has emergency power available via RAT and/or APU, and any fly-by-wire aircraft has batteries to keep the flight control computers running through engine failure to power supply being restored by the RAT and/or APU. Due to its unusually high use of electrical systems, the 787 has particularly large lithium batteries for these cases. There is no need for an additional EPU because the emergency systems already work fine (and did their jobs as expected in this case). You just can't recover from loss of nearly all engine thrust at that phase of takeoff. [2]
1. The notable exceptions to having a RAT for emergency flight controls are the 737 and 747 variants prior to the 747-8. In the 747 case, the four engines would provide sufficient hydraulic power while windmilling in flight and thus no additional RAT would be necessary. The 737 has complete mechanical reversion for critical flight controls, and so can be flown without power of any kind. There is sufficient battery power to keep backup instruments running for beyond the maximum glide time from altitude - at which point the aircraft will have "landed" one way or another.
2. There is only one exception of a certified passenger aircraft with a system for separate emergency thrust. Mexicana briefly operated a special version of the early 727 which would be fitted with rocket assist boosters for use on particularly hot days to ensure that single-engine-out climb performance met certification criteria. Mexicana operated out of particularly "hot and high" airports like Mexico City, which significantly degrade aircraft performance. On the worst summer days, the performance degradation would have been severe enough that the maximum allowable passenger/baggage/fuel load would have been uneconomical without the margin provided by the emergency rockets. I'm not aware of them ever being used on a "real" flight emergency outside of the testing process, and I think any similar design today would face a much higher bar to reach certification.
I suspect any civil aviation engineer who goes "let's add hydrazine!" to fix problems has a fairly short career, lol.
The only solution I can think of is emergency parachutes. Like lots of them. would also be useful for other types of in air engine/control failures.
At least it worked for me on Kerbal Space Program. At least sometimes.
The RAT was already out and doing its job. Adding hydrazine or a nuclear reactor isn't going to help matters when there's no thrust.
I find these comments very illustrative when taken together- they nicely show how different explanations sound spot on until you read the next one. Inexplicable is one of the great words in the English language
Excellent analysis here, those switches are stout, no one is moving them by accident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA_UZeHZwSw
Except when they are not:
From the avherald link:
>Service Bulletins by Boeing issued in year 2018 recommending to upgrade the fuel switches to locked versions to prevent inadvertent flip of the switches, as well as the FAA/GE issued Service Bulletin FAA-2021-0273-0013 Attachment 2 relating to loss of control issue (also see above) were NOT implemented by Air India.
I'm completely ignorant about this matter, but why is it even possible to cut off fuel while taking off? Shouldn't there be a control that completely disables this? Is there actually a situation where cutting off both engines could be necessary and wouldn't lead to a catastrophe?
The general principle of aircraft control is that the pilot has the final say on how it is operated, not the designer, because you never know when you will need to take extraordinary measures. And the pilot generally prefers to return to the ground safely.
I'm assuming fuel being cut off is salvageable if not in the middle of a densely populated city, especially if above a plain or water. So it could be the favorable option in case of an engine fire.
Also, such complexity would introduce additional points of failure - as a sister comment mentions, a faulty altimeter (or whatever sensor) could prevent you from cutting off fuel when you need to.
Engine fire requires you to cut fuel to the affected engine.
Airbus liners don't allow cutting fuel with trust lever on.
In this YouTube short you can see the pilot switching both fuel cutoff to run
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bd4Bler36Nk
there's literally two other similar switches right next to those?
What makes me more inclined to suicide is that this might have been the perfect time to do this so that even a small interruption in fuel would be catastrophic.
If this is the case, you have to then think about why this pilot would want suicide but also murder all aboard the plane. It's a bit irrational if they wanted to just suicide - you can easily just cut your own throat, hang yourself, or jump off a tall building.
So what's the status of full self driving airplanes (aka autopilot , or maybe autodriver to avoid the bad connotations)
Why can the pilot shut off the fuel during takeoff?
Fire, probably. But also, how complicated would you make the system if you needed to prevent certain switches from working during certain times of flight? At some point... we're all just in the hands of the people in the cockpit.
Completely uneducated guess but if one engine bursts into flames you might want to kill the fuel.
Suggest a system that would prevent this, but only this, without causing other risks.
> Why can the pilot shut off the fuel during takeoff?
Engine failure during takeoff.
Engine fire.
What you are really asking is: would we, the passengers, be safer without human pilots?
Eventually, yes. Soon? Maybe.
I have to wonder how much more time they would have had if the landing gear had been retracted early since the gear adds a lot of drag.
It's safe to state these fuel cutoff switches aren't to be touched in-flight unless the word 'fire' is said beforehand. Even then, you only perform fuel cutoff for the flaming engine. If the copilot was busy with takeoff, there is exactly one other person in the entire world that could have flipped both switches. We may never know which one flipped them back.
Fire isn't the only instantly severe problem with engines. Another is violent shaking if, say, part of the rotating assembly came off.
Quote:
The preliminary report suggests this is pilot error.From my (limited) understanding you cannot really switch these off inadvertently as they require a couple of actions in order to be switched off. So it would mean one of the pilots switched these off (and they were a few seconds later switched on again but it was too late).
But there was audio, too, and one pilot asked the other "why did you switch these off" and the second one said "I didn't".
Was there are third one in the jump seat?
It does not suggest that. It only says they were turned off and no other conclusion given.
Report mirror as the site seems to be down:
https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2025/Preliminary_Report_VT_AN...
The India AAIB website (https://aaib.gov.in/) is not responding ... For anyone who read the report, was there information about the age & experience of the pilots?
56 years old, 15638 hours (8596 on this type) and 32 years old, 3403 hours (1128 on this type). Page 11 of the PDF report.
reached v1, then when airborn fuel cut off. Seems like there was a FAA report like in 2018 that recommended few airplane models (incl this one) to check the fuel valves correctly, seems like air india didn't do it. Turns out it was made by Honeywell
All evidence suggests that the plane was fully functional. The switches were moved by one of the pilots.
Video would definitively show whether either pilot moved these switches or if some other mechanism caused the movement. The aviation industry has consistently resisted cockpit video recording despite decades of available technology. The pilot unions argue privacy concerns, but cases like this demonstrate the value it would have. Current audio captured the pilots' denials, but without visual confirmation we may never be able to definitively determine who turned the engines off.
Report PDF here: https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Repo...
mirror https://web.archive.org/web/20250711203907/https://aaib.gov....
Not accessible. Have they heard about S3 ?
The switch had to be operated deliberately, but still a UX fail on a modern aircraft if cutting off fuel to the engines does not result in an audible alert/alarm which both pilots can hear - especially at that altitude.
It would not make any difference. They were too low and did not have enough time to recover. They immediately switched back to on. Two captains is discussing it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0BetkXsLg).
It’s interesting to see how many people are bending over backwards here to avoid coming to the obvious conclusion. If this was pilot suicide, it’s a terrible thing. If it was somehow an error (which seems very unlikely) or two defective controls (which seems even more unlikely), then it remains a tragedy. But I don’t need to do mental gymnastics to come up with implausible hypotheticals.
This comment stream on HN is not a jury. We don’t have to refrain from making judgments right now about what happened. There is nothing wrong with rational people reaching a preliminary conclusion based on available evidence.
Rational people should also remain open to revising their judgments/conclusions if new information becomes available.
And we shouldn’t demand any specific consequences for anyone absent a trial.
It’s nowhere near an obvious conclusion. A failure with the locking mechanism or muscle memory confusion are just as likely, and probably other theories I’m not thinking of. More investigation is clearly needed, which is why this is called a preliminary report.
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Well, shit. Suicidal?
And this can't possibly be all the audio if the other pilot noticed the switch position, I would expect a lot more cussing and struggle.
So they didn't notice the switch position? The switch was in the right position but not really? Is this a rarely used switch that one might not look at (or know where to look) during regular use?
10 seconds between OFF and ON.
Dual engine failure on takeoff gives them about as much time to react as if the front passenger grabbed the steering wheel while on a windy mountain road and yanked them off a cliff.
It only takes a few seconds to completely screw everyone, but a bit longer for the consequences to occur.
From what I've read, it comes on the display as a warning
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The report says the co-pilot was flying.
The report says the black box reports the fuel cutoff switches being activated. That doesn't necessarily mean that either of the two pilots activated them, it just means that the fly-by-wire system reacted to a fuel cutoff event.
"The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cutoff.
In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff.
The other pilot responded that he did not do so."
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Even taking intent for granted, to deny suicide in a case like this would be to suppose that the person responsible expected to survive while everyone else died. What could possibly support that conclusion?
I don’t understand this part of your post:
> This was not suicide, or murder-suicide; it was one of the most horrific mass murders in history, in which the guy that did it happened to lose his life in the process.
Why wouldn’t this qualify as a murder-suicide, assuming your theory is correct?
As someone with no qualifications on this beyond occasionally playing some flight simulators, I can't think of a reason you would ever intentionally move the switches in flight (barring an emergency like a leak or fire or something) and unintentionally doing so seems extremely unlikely since generally "switches meant to be operated on the ground" are located well out of the way of "switches meant to be operated in flight". Though I believe Boeing does have them by the thrust levers, every type of fuel control switch I've seen has some sort of guard or mechanism that makes it effectively impossible to move the switch by simply bumping it.
So I can't imagine how it could have been done accidentally.
> it was one of the most horrific mass murder in history
This implies intent.
> One pilot asked “why did you turn them off?” and the other said “I didn’t.”
To me this reads like an unintentional error with colossol implications.
Are you suggesting there was malicious intent and then a delibrately crafted denial by the perpetrator?
These are not facts. These are mostly speculation.
You mention "brain fart". There is certainly a long history of pilots selecting the wrong lever, or wrong switch. So, it is possible the pilot who denied switching the fuel off thought he had switched something else.
Is there a possibility that they got hacked and remotely toggled ?
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44536691
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A simple wrong flip of a switch killed 260 people and leaving 1 lone survivor who walked away from the plane crash nearly unscathed.
Dudes is extremely lucky or the character from Unbreakable.
Even if the plane had no power, why couldn't they have glided it down safely?
The report says the co-pilot was flying so it's most likely the pilot cut the fuel?
Report page that matters: https://x.com/exodusorbitals/status/1943782924576309732
It's simple - just don't fly Boeing - ever.