Air India 787 crash: Italian news report claims ‘human intervention was almost certainly intentional’

A day after the Supreme Court asked the Centre to file a brief report on the “procedural protocol” followed so far, after it was informed that the investigation into the June 2025 Air India plane crash by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) is at its fag end, new claims by a report in an Italian website, ‘Corriere della Sera’. has put focus on one of the two pilots who flew the plane on the fateful day. As many as 260 people died – 241 of the 242 on board the plane and 19 on the ground in the 12 June plane crash in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Quoting “two Western sources”, the Italian news report claimed that “there was no technical defect”. But human intervention was "almost certainly" intentional.

The Italian news website said that the experts “never found both engines shutting down due to a fault” and the “only reasonable explanation was always human intervention, whether intentional or a mistake.” It also went on to claim that Indian investigators leading the probe into the Air India Boeing 787 crash are “preparing to write in their final report that the plane crashed because one of the pilots turned off the two fuel switches”.

Mint couldn't independently verify the claims.

The Italian news website also said that the preliminary report "determined that the engines had shut down almost simultaneously after the fuel switches were switched from Run to Cutoff.

"The preliminary report, however, did not explain why the engines had stopped working within a second of each other, inserting, in a line and a half, a crucial piece of information: the cockpit audio extracted from the "cockpit voice recorder" (one of the two black boxes) had recorded one pilot—unnamed—asking the other: "Why did you turn off the engines?" And the answer: "It wasn't me." Restarting the engines subsequently was not enough," Corriere della Sera said.

Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani was also among the victims. Only one person, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, survived the crash. A video showed him walking out of the plane as it burned following the crash. His brother died.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was informed by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), on Wednesday, 11 February, that the AAIB investigation is in its final stages, with certain aspects still requiring work abroad.

(With agency inputs)