A leading aviation expert is suggesting the Air-India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 26th, claiming the lives of 260 people, may have been deliberately brought down. Heinrich Großbongardt, a former employee of Boeing, Lufthansa and the pilots’ association Cockpit, believes the incident bears hallmarks of a potential suicide.
According to Großbongardt, one of the pilots appears to have intentionally interrupted the fuel supply to the aircraft at a critical moment shortly after takeoff. He stated the interruption occurred precisely when the plane was most vulnerable, requiring maximum thrust to gain altitude and speed. This deliberate action, he argues, resulted in the aircraft’s catastrophic descent.
Grossbongardt dismissed the possibility of a technical malfunction as highly improbable. He highlighted findings in a preliminary investigation report indicating that fuel controls for both engines were switched from “RUN” to “CUTOFF” within seconds of takeoff, with a one-second interval between the activation of each control. He asserted that such sequential and deliberate action could only have been performed by one of the two pilots in the cockpit.
He further discounted the possibility of the controls being unintentionally activated, citing multiple safety mechanisms designed to prevent such an occurrence. However, Großbongardt emphasized that the identity of the pilot potentially responsible for deactivating the fuel controls remains completely unknown.