The interim probe report into the Air India crash possibly raises more questions than it answers. Aviation safety expert Amit Singh, who has flown the Boeing 777 aircraft, and is the founder of the NGO Safety Matters, says the report lacks technical transparency, and by omitting recommendations on necessary inspections and immediate corrective steps, fails to show the urgency warranted by a catastrophic event such as the June 12 crash that killed 260 people.

What are the key highlights of the probe report?

The report begins by highlighting a 2018 FAA Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) regarding the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature. Air India had not inspected their fleet regarding this. The mechanical failure in the fuel control switch mechanism could have allowed the switches to move directly, bypassing the safety feature. This possibly resulted in cutting off fuel supply to the two engines, and their subsequent shutdown, resulting in the crash.

The second important aspect of the report is to determine at what stage the engines stopped producing the thrust, which eventually led to the accident. The report states that the aircraft got airborne at 1.38.39 p.m. and attained a maximum speed of 180 knots at 1.38.42 p.m., following which the two fuel control switches moved to the ‘cut off’ position. One would imagine that this was the point when the engines would have stopped producing thrust, but the report further down states that the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which is a backup power source that activates after a double engine failure, was deployed during initial climb, immediately after take-off. For the RAT to deploy, both engines have to stop. Therefore, we can deduce that the engines stopped just before lift-off. However, the fuel control switches were moved to shut off much later.

What do we need to know to understand whether this was human action, or inadvertent?

We will need to know specifically what were the exact cockpit actions and switch movement logs. We also need the full transcript of the cockpit voice recording, whereas the preliminary report only gives a sentence that was exchanged between the two pilots, where one asks the other why he switched off the fuel supply to which the other pilot says that he had not done so.

Information is also needed on whether the locking mechanisms on fuel switches were installed or disabled. Also, if there were any uncommanded system inputs or failures.

Compared with other high profile preliminary reports, such as the 33-page Ethiopian Airlines ET 302 (737 MAX) report, the AI 171 report is notably brief and lacking in technical transparency. The ET 302 report included extensive data traces, CVR excerpts, checklists, and manufacturer bulletins, enabling stakeholders worldwide to act swiftly. In contrast, the AI 171 report reads more like a narrative than a technical investigation, and fails to offer the clarity and urgency warranted by such a catastrophic event.

What are the chances of the two switches moving or transitioning by themselves?

Such a possibility is extremely unlikely unless one of the following occurred.

The locking feature on the fuel switches was disengaged as given in the FAA SAIB of 2018, or there was a faulty installation of the lock on the fuel switch that allowed unintended their movement, cutting off fuel supply to the engine.

Other possibilities include vibration experienced by the quadrant or levers due to the uneven runway surface. Or if there were any uncommanded system inputs or failures, that is, one where there was no input from the pilots.

What do you make of the Boeing advisory and Air India’s failure to take corrective action?

It reflects a serious lapse in safety oversight. SAIB NM-18-33 warned of exactly this failure mode, but there’s no evidence that Air India acted. A corrective action may have prevented this crash.

The AAIB interim report too should have issued clear and immediate recommendations, including inspection and verification of fuel control switch locking mechanisms across all Boeing 787 aircraft, [and] policy changes to elevate SAIBs to mandatory compliance when warranted.

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday vowed her department will strengthen its efforts to crack down on immigration, thanks to a funding boost from President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill, which he signed into law last week.

“Now that the president’s reconciliation bill, the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ has passed, we also have more resources,” Noem said at a news conference in Tampa, Florida. “We’re going to come harder and faster, and we’re going to take these criminals down with even more strength than we ever have before.”

The new law provides agencies — particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which are within DHS — far larger funds for immigration enforcement. ICE is receiving nearly $75 billion through 2029, with $45 billion allocated to expand the capacity of its detention centers. Meanwhile, CBP is receiving more than $46 billion for the border wall.

During the news conference, Noem also justified the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda, which has included efforts to end birthright citizenship, deporting migrants to countries other than their homelands and, in recent weeks, chaotic immigration raids in public and workplaces across Southern California.

Noem said Trump “has a mandate from the American people to clean up our streets, to help make our communities safer.”

Noem’s comments come a day after a federal judge dealt a major blow to the Trump administration, finding that DHS has been making stops and arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause. US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, also granted a temporary restraining order to stop the department from detaining individuals solely on race or ethnicity, spoken language or accent, or “presence at a particular location” like a bus stop or occupation.

When asked by a reporter at the news conference about Friday’s order, Noem called the judge “an idiot” while doubling down on the department’s practices.

“We have all the right in the world to go out on the streets and to uphold the law and to do what we’re going to do, so none of our operations are going to change,” Noem said, adding that the judge’s findings “were absolutely false.”

The White House similarly slammed Friday’s order in a statement to CNN Saturday, calling it a “gross overstep of judicial authority.”

“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the President,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in the statement. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge.”

CNN’s Julia Benbrook contributed to this report.

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By Donald Judd, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump reignited a decadeslong feud with comedian Rosie O’Donnell on Saturday, taking to his Truth Social platform to write he was considering revoking her citizenship.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown Law, said Saturday that Trump’s threat of “coercive expatriation” was “patently unconstitutional.”

“For good reasons, it is difficult to denaturalize a U.S. citizen and even harder to expatriate one,” Vladeck wrote in April. “Congress has provided for only a handful of circumstances in which the executive branch is empowered to pursue such a move; and the Supreme Court has recognized meaningful constitutional limits (and an entitlement to meaningful judicial review) even in those cases.”

CNN has reached out to the White House about what prompted the president’s threat — but O’Donnell drew attention last weekend after she posted a video to TikTok slamming the Trump administration’s response to the Texas floods, claiming the president “gut[ted] all of the early warning systems and the weathering‑forecast abilities of the government,” stymying the federal response.

O’Donell moved to Ireland shortly before Trump’s inauguration in January, telling CNN in April that Trump’s reelection prompted the move.

“I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. “I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms.”

Responding to the president’s post Saturday, O’Donnell wrote on Instagram, “you want to revoke my citizenship? go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan. i’m not yours to silence. i never was.”

Trump and O’Donnell have clashed since at least 2006, after O’Donell — then a co-host of “The View” — called Trump a “snake-oil salesman on Little House On The Prairie,” and said he went bankrupt, which Trump denied.

For his part, Trump has called O’Donnell “a real loser,” “crude, rude, obnoxious, and dumb,” and “a pig” over the years.

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CNN —

An official report on the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade has answered one key question – but raised others.

Air India flight AI171 had barely left the runway last month when it lost momentum and crashed in a densely populated area of India’s western city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.

Now, a preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has revealed that fuel supply to both engines was cut in the crucial minutes as the aircraft was ascending.

The plane’s “black box,” its flight data recorder, showed that the aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one,” the report says. The switches were flipped within a second of each other, halting the flow of fuel.

On an audio recording from the black box, mentioned in the report, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he flipped the switches. The other pilot responds that he did not do so. The report does not specify who was the pilot and who was the co-pilot in the dialogue.

Seconds later, the switches on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were flipped the other way to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines were able to relight, and one began to “progress to recovery,” the report said, but it was too late to stop the plane’s gut-wrenching descent.

The report reveals the fundamental reason why the jet crashed, but much remains unexplained.

Kalpeshbhqi Patni cries out as he waits outside a hospital in Ahmedabad, India, on Friday, June 13. His brother Akash died in the plane that crashed there the previous day. Adnan Abidi/Reuters Security personnel walk near damaged buildings at the crash site on Friday. Adnan Abidi/Reuters Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the crash site on Friday. Press Information Bureau/Anadolu/Getty Images Hospital staff load the body of a plane crash victim into a vehicle at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad on Friday. Amit Dave/Reuters People gather near the site of the crash on Thursday, June 12. Amit Dave/Reuters Search-and-recovery teams work through the rubble on Thursday evening. Ajit Solanki/AP Security guards stand at the crash site. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images The interior of the building where the plane crash-landed. Ajit Solanki/AP Health officials wait to take DNA samples from the family members of plane crash victims on Thursday. Adnan Abidi/Reuters Dabu Patni cries upon learning that her brother Akash was aboard the plane that crashed. Amit Dave/Reuters Rescue officials work at the site of the crash. Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images A firefighter works at the crash site. Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images Thursday’s crash marks the first involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner since the aircraft first entered into service in 2011, according to Boeing’s Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents. Amit Dave/Reuters Rescue team members work at the site of the plane crash. Amit Dave/Reuters Officials work at the crash site. Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images The tail of the airplane is stuck in a building. Ajit Solanki/AP A police officer stands in front of the wreckage. Adnan Abidi/Reuters People work at the crash site. Ajit Solanki/AP Rescuers carry a victim’s body. Ajit Solanki/AP People stand around the debris of the airplane. Ajit Solanki/AP In pictures: Passenger plane crashes in India Prev Next

From RUN to CUTOFF – but how?

The findings do not make clear how the fuel switches were flipped to the cutoff position during the flight, whether it was deliberate, accidental or if a technical fault was responsible.

On Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners, the fuel switches are between the two pilots’ seats, immediately behind the plane’s throttle levers. They are protected on the sides by a metal bar.

The switches require an operator to physically lift the switch handle up and over a detent – a catch – as they are deliberately designed so they can’t be knocked accidentally.

Geoffrey Dell, an air safety specialist who has conducted numerous aircraft accident investigations, finds it hard to see how both switches could have been flipped in error.

“It’s at least a two-action process for each one,” he told CNN. “You’ve got to pull the switch out towards you and then push it down. It’s not the sort of thing you can do inadvertently.”

According to Dell, it would be “bizarre” for a pilot to deliberately cut fuel to both engines immediately after take-off.

There is “no scenario on the planet where you’d do that immediately after lift-off,” he said.

Pointing to the fact that both engine switches were flipped within a second of each other, Dell noted: “That’s the sort of thing you do when you park the airplane at the end of the flight… You plug into the terminal and shut the engines down.”

One possibility the report raises relates to an information bulletin issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2018 about “the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature.” But, given that this was not considered an unsafe condition, Air India did not carry out inspections.

Dell said an aircraft’s flight data recorder should help explain how the fuel switches were flipped in each case. However, India’s AAIB has not released a full transcript of the conversation between the two pilots. Without it, Dell says it’s difficult to understand what happened.

Rescue workers at the site where the Air India plane crashed. Amit Dave/Reuters

Former pilot Ehsan Khalid also believes that the report’s findings raised questions over the position of the vital engine fuel switches, which, he said, should be clarified by the investigators.

Speaking to Reuters, Khalid warned against pinning the blame on the pilots. “The AAIB report to me is only conclusive to say that the accident happened because both engines lost power.”

He added: “The pilots were aware that the aircraft engine power has been lost, and pilots also were aware that they did not do any action to cause this.”

A full report is not due for months and India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu, said: “Let’s not jump to any conclusions at this stage.”

The Air India jet took off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat on June 12, bound for London Gatwick.

Air India had said 242 passengers and crew members were on board. That included 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. Everyone on board was killed, except for one passenger.

The 19 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel.

Air India has acknowledged that it has received the report and said it will continue cooperating with authorities in the investigation.

Why cockpit audio deepens the mystery of Air India crash

5 hours ago Share Save Soutik Biswas • @soutikBBC India correspondent Share Save

Air India plane descending moments before crash

Investigators have made a chilling discovery in the preliminary investigation into the Air India Flight 171 crash which killed 260 people in June. Just seconds after take-off, both of the 12-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s fuel-control switches abruptly moved to the “cut-off” position, starving the engines of fuel and triggering total power loss. Switching to “cut-off” is a move typically done only after landing. The cockpit voice recording captures one pilot asking the other why he “did the cut-off”, to which the person replies that he didn’t. The recording doesn’t clarify who said what. At the time of take-off, the co-pilot was flying the aircraft while the captain was monitoring. The switches were returned to their normal inflight position, triggering automatic engine relight. At the time of the crash, one engine was regaining thrust while the other had relit but had not yet recovered power. Air India Flight 171 was airborne for less than a minute before crashing into a crowded neighbourhood in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, marking one of India’s most baffling aviation disasters. Investigators are probing the wreckage and cockpit recorders to understand what went wrong just after take-off. The Air India flight climbed to 625 feet in clear weather before losing location data about 50 seconds in, according to the FlightRadar24 website. The preliminary report from the investigation – led by Indian authorities with experts from Boeing, General Electric, Air India, Indian regulators, and participants from the US and UK – raises several questions. Investigators say the lever-lock fuel switches are designed to prevent accidental activation – they must be pulled up to unlock before flipping, a safety feature dating back to the 1950s. Built to exacting standards, they’re highly reliable. Protective guard brackets further shield them from accidental bumps. “It would be almost impossible to pull both switches with a single movement of one hand, and this makes accidental deployment unlikely,” a Canada-based air accidents investigator, who wanted to remain unnamed, told the BBC. That’s what makes the Air India case stand out. What we know so far about Air India crash investigation

Read the preliminary report

If one of the pilots was responsible for shutting down the switches, intentionally or not, it “does beg the question: why”, said Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline accident investigator and aviation expert at Ohio State University. “Was it intentional, or the result of confusion? That seems unlikely, as the pilots reported nothing unusual.

“In many cockpit emergencies, pilots may press the wrong buttons or make incorrect selections – but there was no indication of such a situation here, nor any discussion suggesting that the fuel switches were selected by mistake,” he said. “This kind of error doesn’t typically happen without some evident issue.”

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the US’s NTSB, said: “The finding is very disturbing – that a pilot has shut off the fuel switch within seconds of flying.” “There’s likely much more on the cockpit voice recorder than what’s been shared. A lone remark like ‘why did you cut off the switches’ isn’t enough,” he said. “The new details suggest someone in the cockpit shut those valves. The question is, who, and why? Both switches were turned off and then restarted within seconds. “The voice recorder will reveal more: was the flying pilot trying to restart the engines, or the monitoring one?” Investigators believe the cockpit voice recorder – with audio from pilot mics, radio calls and ambient cockpit sounds – holds the key to this puzzle. “They haven’t identified the voices yet, which is crucial. Typically, when the voice recorder is reviewed, people familiar with the pilots are present to help match voices. As of now, we still don’t know which pilot turned the switches off and back on,” said Mr Goelz. In short, investigators say what’s needed is clear voice identification, a full cockpit transcript with labelled speakers, and a thorough review of all communications from the moment the plane was pushed back from the gate to the time it crashed. They also say this underscores the need for cockpit video recorders, as recommended by the NTSB. An over-the-shoulder view would show whose hand was on the cut-off switch. Before boarding Flight 171, both pilots and crew had passed breathalyser tests and had been cleared fit to fly, the report says. The pilots, based in Mumbai, had arrived in Ahmedabad the day before the flight and had adequate rest. But investigators are also zeroing in on what they describe is an interesting point in the report. It says in December 2018, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) highlighting that some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. While the issue was noted, it wasn’t deemed an unsafe condition requiring an Airworthiness Directive (AD) – a legally enforceable regulation to correct unsafe conditions in a product. The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 aircraft, including Air India’s VT-ANB which crashed. As the SAIB was advisory, Air India did not perform the recommended inspections.

Getty Images Air India Flight 171 crashed into a crowded neighbourhood in Ahmedabad