The final report on the Air India Flight 171 disaster reveals that both engines were mysteriously shut down midair, killing 260 people, but investigators remain divided between a shocking act of intent and a catastrophic system failure—leaving grieving families desperate for truth and justice.

On the morning of June 21, 2025, the world watched in horror as Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London, plummeted from the sky just seconds after takeoff from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai.

The crash killed all 260 people on board, including 10 crew members and 19 residents on the ground.

For months, speculation swirled about what could have caused such a catastrophic dual-engine failure on one of the safest aircraft ever built.

Now, nearly five months later, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has released its long-awaited final report—and the findings raise as many questions as they answer.

According to the 247-page report, both fuel control switches in the cockpit were found in the “CUTOFF” position, effectively shutting down both engines midair.

“This is not a normal scenario,” the report states bluntly.

“For both engines to lose thrust almost simultaneously, either a critical systems malfunction occurred, or the switches were deliberately manipulated.”

Investigators confirmed that the flight took off normally at 7:48 a.m., reaching an altitude of 1,300 feet before the first signs of power loss.Within four seconds, the right engine flamed out, followed by the left.

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured a brief exchange between the captain, Commander Rajeev Sharma, and first officer Priya Mehta, moments before impact.“Engine two’s gone,” Mehta is heard saying, followed by a calm but chilling response from Sharma: “We’ve lost both.

Trying restart.”
The final sound on the recording is a sharp alarm—then silence.

What stunned investigators was the lack of any clear mechanical cause.

The flight data recorder (FDR) showed no signs of fuel contamination, bird strikes, or compressor stall.

 

 

Maintenance logs from the previous night showed the aircraft had passed all safety checks.

The Dreamliner’s RAM Air Turbine (RAT) deployed as designed, confirming total power loss.

Yet no restart was attempted via the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit)—an omission that remains unexplained.

Adding to the mystery are the switch positions.

Both were set to “CUTOFF,” a guarded position that requires physical effort to engage.

According to Boeing’s own safety engineers, it would be “virtually impossible” for those switches to move without deliberate intent.

The DGCA report cautiously stopped short of labeling the crash a suicide, but internal sources say that psychological evaluations of Captain Sharma revealed “recent financial stress and marital strain.

” However, those close to him reject that theory entirely.“Rajeev was devoted to his job,” said a former colleague who asked not to be named.

“He was planning his daughter’s wedding.

There is no way he would do something like that.”

Investigators also examined whether a malfunction in the aircraft’s electronic control unit (ECU) could have sent false signals to the fuel system.

Boeing representatives who participated in the joint U.S.–India inquiry claimed that no such failure mode had been observed in over a decade of Dreamliner operations.

A parallel investigation by aviation documentary group MindGap analyzed the event frame by frame, reconstructing the flight using air traffic control (ATC) audio, radar traces, and physics-based modeling.

Their findings challenge the DGCA’s official narrative.