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India, Air India plane crash: the captain suffered from depression

The Boeing 787 bound for London crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad: 260 dead. Doubts about the pilot’s psychological condition and the dynamics of the engine shutdown

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, pilot of Air India flight AI117, which crashed on 12 June in Ahmedabad a few minutes after take-off for London, was probably suffering from depression. 260 people lost their lives in the crash, including 241 on board. Only one passenger survived.

According to reports in The Telegraph and confirmed by investigative sources, Sabharwal had over 15,000 flying hours but had already taken leave in recent years for mental health reasons. After mourning the death of his mother in 2022, he was considering early retirement to care for his elderly father.

The dialogue recorded by the black box
The black box recordings revealed a disturbing dialogue between Sabharwal and the co-pilot, who had 3,400 hours of experience. The captain can be heard asking, ‘Why did you shut down the engines?’ and the co-pilot replying, ‘No, I didn’t.’

This prompted investigators to look into the real causes of the engine shutdown. According to an initial technical report, the fuel shut-off switch was activated three seconds after take-off, causing a fatal loss of thrust.

The switches may have been activated by mistake
The fuel switches, which normally remain activated throughout the flight, appear to be the direct cause of the loss of propulsion. Authorities are trying to determine whether they were activated by mistake or deliberately and whether there was an attempt to reset them to deal with a malfunction.

The aircraft’s emergency generator, the ram air turbine (RAT), activated just moments before impact, indicating that the system had detected an irreversible critical condition.

First fatal accident for a Dreamliner
The disaster is the first fatal accident in the operational history of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The aircraft crashed near a university hostel for medical students, narrowly avoiding an even greater tragedy.

Mohan Ranganathan, an Indian aviation safety expert, confirmed that “many of Sabharwal’s colleagues knew about his mental health issues” and that “he had taken several leaves of absence for medical reasons over the past three or four years”.

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