Grieving father of captain says investigators insinuated son cut fuel

AIR INDIA CRASH

- REUTERS

The father of the crashed Air India flight's captain said officials from India's accident investigation bureau visited him last month and implied his son cut the fuel to the plane's engines after takeoff, correspondence obtained by Reuters showed.

Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, 91, emailed the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) last week to say that Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) officials had visited him at home August 30 “under the pretext of offering condolences”, and implied his son, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, was the one who moved the fuel switches.

“During this interaction ... they went beyond their mandate - speaking in innuendos and insinuating, on the basis of selective CVR (cockpit voice recorder) interpretation and a so-called ‘layered voice analysis’, that my son had moved the fuel control switches from RUN to CUTOFF after takeoff,” the September 17 email said.