"I had promised myself that I would quit the job after one or two more flights and would dedicate myself to taking care of my son full-time," explained a grieving elderly man who had just received the remains of his son, Sumeet Sabharwal, the captain of the Air India plane that had crashed eight days earlier after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India.
The family was paying a final tribute to the 56-year-old pilot in his hometown, Bombay. Now, almost a month later, there are many suspicions pointing to Sabharwal as responsible for the crash in which 241 of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner heading to London died.
While Indian investigators are cautious in assigning blame, sources from the United States who also participated in the initial assessment of the accident have revealed to the Wall Street Journal that the co-pilot, Clive Kunder, who was flying the plane at the time, expressed his "surprise" upon realizing that the captain had manipulated the fuel switches, and then "panicked" while Sabharwal, remaining calm, denied touching some switches located just below the thrust levers that went from the "on" position to "off" in a second.
"Why did you shut off the engines?" the first officer exclaimed. "It wasn't me," the captain responded. Immediately after, the air traffic control received a distress call from the plane. "Descending... Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!," Sabharwal exclaimed.
The preliminary report did not identify the voices during the recorded discussion in the cockpit, but American pilots who had access to the material being investigated have pointed to the captain because Kunder, in control of the aircraft at that moment, would have had his hands busy pulling the Boeing controls. According to consulted experts, it is not uncommon for the senior pilot to occasionally hand over control of the aircraft to the co-pilot during takeoff.
Following the disclosure of these details of what transpired in the cockpit just before the plane crashed into a medical faculty residence very close to the airport, anonymous statements from other Air India pilots have emerged suggesting that Sabharwal may have been experiencing depression. In response, investigators have reportedly requested the pilot's medical records from the airline.
"Several Air India pilots told me that he was depressed and had mental health issues," stated Mohan Ranganathan, an Indian aviation safety expert, adding that Sabharwal had been on medical leave at various times, most recently after his mother's death in 2022. However, according to Ranganathan, the pilot underwent a medical examination in September 2024 and was cleared to resume flying.
Sabharwal had over 15,000 hours of flight experience and had reportedly told his family that he would soon retire to care for his ailing father. None of his interviewed family and friends mentioned anything about this alleged depression or any other issues. Kunder, 32, had 3,400 flight hours and was at the beginning of his commercial pilot career.
"The preliminary report did not identify any cause or make any recommendations, so it urged everyone to avoid drawing premature conclusions, as the investigation is far from over," emphasized Air India's CEO, Campbell Wilson, in recent days. The Indian Commercial Pilots' Association (ICPA) expressed in a statement that it was "deeply disturbed by speculative narratives", particularly by the "reckless and unfounded insinuations about the pilot's possible suicide." India reiterates that it is still too early to reach definitive conclusions and that the investigation could take years to determine what really happened.