After Air India Flight 171 crashed just seconds after takeoff on June 21, 2025, killing 260 people, investigators discovered both engine fuel switches set to “CUTOFF” — a chilling clue that left experts torn between a tragic technical malfunction and an unthinkable human act, deepening the heartbreak and mystery surrounding the disaster.

The mystery surrounding Air India Flight 171 has finally reached its most unsettling chapter.

The official final investigation report, released this week by India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has reignited questions about one of the deadliest and most perplexing aviation disasters in recent history.

On June 21, 2025, Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, took off from Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi bound for Dubai with 260 people on board — 247 passengers and 13 crew members.

Within 42 seconds of takeoff, both of the aircraft’s Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines failed almost simultaneously.

The aircraft lost thrust, banked sharply left, and crashed into an open field near Gurugram, bursting into flames on impact.

There were no survivors.

At first, investigators assumed a catastrophic dual-engine failure — a mechanical impossibility under normal conditions — had caused the tragedy.

But when recovery teams retrieved the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) from the wreckage, what they found shocked even veteran investigators.

Both engine fuel control switches — the guarded levers that cut fuel to the engines — were discovered in the “CUTOFF” position, meaning the engines had been manually shut down.

According to the DGCA report, this discovery “cannot be explained by aerodynamic, hydraulic, or electrical anomalies” during the sequence of events recorded.

The switches, investigators wrote, “require deliberate movement by flight crew or mechanical interference inconsistent with normal flight operation.”

The finding immediately raised two haunting possibilities: either a pilot deliberately shut down both engines, or a technical fault had somehow moved two protected switches within seconds of each other — a scenario engineers say borders on the impossible.

In the months following the crash, theories split the aviation community.

Early speculation, fueled by anonymous leaks, suggested a pilot suicide similar to the 2015 Germanwings Flight 9525 disaster.

However, the final report complicates that theory.

The cockpit transcript from the CVR captured confusion, not intent.

At 06:04:11 local time, the first officer was heard saying, “Engine one’s losing pressure,” followed two seconds later by the captain’s exclamation, “We’ve lost two!” In the next ten seconds, both pilots struggled to restart the engines while declaring a mayday to air traffic control.

The transmission cut off as alarms sounded, and the final recorded sound was the deployment of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) — a backup power source that activates when both engines fail.

“There’s no verbal or behavioral evidence of deliberate action,” said Captain Nalin Suresh, a retired pilot and former Air India safety trainer who reviewed the report.

“They were fighting to save that airplane.”

Still, engineers are left with an equally troubling question: how could both fuel switches move to ‘CUTOFF’ on their own? The 787’s design makes such movement physically difficult.

The switches are spring-locked under safety guards, requiring two separate, firm hand actions.

Some independent analysts now suspect a cascading systems failure linked to the electronic engine control units (EECs) — the same units previously implicated in a 2023 incident involving another 787 operated by Japan Airlines.

“A dual transient in the EECs could theoretically send a false cutoff command,” said Dr.Mira Shah, an aerospace systems specialist at the Indian Institute of Technology.

“But we’ve never seen it happen twice, seconds apart, in the same flight.”

Adding to the confusion are contradictions in the wreckage data.

The flaps were found at position 5, standard for takeoff, but the landing gear appeared partially retracted — inconsistent with the timeline.

The tower audio recorded the crew acknowledging takeoff clearance and a “positive climb,” before the aircraft’s signal vanished from radar.

The report stops short of naming a definitive culprit.

Instead, it lists “probable causes” — a combination of engine control anomalies and manual switch movement not fully explained by mechanical evidence.

It also recommends urgent inspection of the fuel control and EEC systems across all Dreamliner fleets operating in India.

Air India, in a brief statement following the report’s release, expressed “profound sorrow” for the victims and said it would cooperate fully with Boeing and Rolls-Royce on further analysis.

Boeing, for its part, has maintained that “no evidence of design defect” has been confirmed but has agreed to review sensor redundancy protocols.

For families of the victims, the final report offers little closure.

“We just want the truth,” said Priya Menon, who lost her husband and two children on Flight 171.

“If it was a technical failure, we deserve to know.

If it was something else, we deserve honesty.”

Nearly five months after that June morning, the skies over Gurugram remain silent — but the questions left behind are louder than ever.

The official report may have been released, yet its final pages read less like an ending and more like the beginning of a deeper mystery: was Air India Flight 171 brought down by a system failure no one saw coming, or by a decision no one can yet explain?